“I will resign as prime minister and leader of the People’s Party [Áo] in the coming days and create conditions for an orderly transition,” Austrian Prime Minister Karl Nehammer announced in a video posted to social network X on January 4.
Austrian Prime Minister Karl Nehammer
According to Reuters, the announcement was made after the dialogue to form a coalition government between the Austrian People’s Party (OVP) and the Social Democratic Party (SPO) collapsed, in which the two sides accused each other of not compromising on politics. book. The New and Free Austria Forum (NEOS) party also withdrew from the dialogue a day earlier and criticized the remaining parties for not committing to the policies NEOS wanted.
The Austrian parliamentary election took place in September, in which the Freedom Party (FPO) won the most votes for the first time with about 29%. FPO is a far-right party, anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic. Because no party wanted to cooperate with the FPO, President Alexander Van der Bellen assigned the power to form a government to Mr. Nehammer’s OVP.
With the resignation of Austrian Prime Minister Nehammer, the two most likely developments that will happen are that the FPO will again look for a partner to form a coalition government or there will be a re-election.
Mr. Nehammer said that FPO leader Herbert Kickl is a conspiracy theorist and difficult to lead the government, although he considers the FPO trustworthy. However, Mr. Kickl is no outsider within the FPO, which has similar views to the OVP on policies such as immigration. OVP and FPO were in power together from 2017-2019 with the prime minister being FPO leader Sebastian Kurz.
According to Reuters, OVP leaders will meet on January 5 to choose Mr. Nehammer’s successor.
