Austria’s conservatives want far right to be asked to form coalition

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By Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) -Austria’s conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer urged the country’s president on Tuesday to task the far-right Freedom Party with forming a coalition after it won Sunday’s general election, even though its chances of succeeding appear slim.

The Russia-friendly, anti-immigration Freedom Party’s (FPO) victory was a historic first for the party formed in the 1950s whose first leader had been an SS officer and Nazi lawmaker.

Having secured around 29% of the vote, the FPO would need a coalition partner to control a majority of seats in parliament and govern. The other parties have said they are not interested.

“In my view it is a good tradition that the winner of the election is tasked with holding sounding-out talks (with other parties),” Nehammer told reporters, after the leadership of his People’s Party (OVP) unanimously reaffirmed him as leader.

The OVP came second in Sunday’s election, around 2-1/2 percentage points behind the FPO. If it allied with the third-placed Social Democrats they would have a majority of just one seat, which is widely seen as too narrow a margin to be viable.

That means a three-way tie-up with a smaller party like the liberal Neos would be a more likely option.

With elections due in two OVP-led provinces this month and next, however, some in the party are wary of sidelining the FPO too soon for fear of losing ground to it again.

President Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Greens who oversees the formation of governments, said on Sunday he would hold meetings with parliamentary parties and told them to talk to each other, leaving open what would happen next.

Whether Van der Bellen did that to avoid tasking the FPO with forming a government or as a prelude to doing so is unclear. After the last parliamentary election in 2019 he waited eight days before tasking the winner, the OVP’s then-leader Sebastian Kurz, with forming a coalition.

Van der Bellen has said he has reservations about the FPO in general and its leader Herbert Kickl in particular, and has hinted he might not let either take office. Kickl says Van der Bellen should follow the established practice and task the first-placed party with forming a coalition.

“It is now up to the president to say how he envisions the next steps in the process,” Nehammer said.

At least one party disagreed with Nehammer.

“I am not in a position to tell the president to do anything. I think it shows respect for the office not to call for things,” Neos leader Beate Meinl-Reisinger told a news conference.

“I don’t see what is stopping Mr Kickl from holding talks and seeing if he can assemble a coalition. He doesn’t need to be formally tasked with doing that.”

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Timothy Heritage, Mark Heinrich, Alexandra Hudson)