Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Sunday announced that he would meet with far-right politician Herbert Kickl as speculation grows that he will ask the Freedom Party leader to form a government.
Van der Bellen made the announcement after meeting with Chancellor Karl Nehammer and others at his presidential palace. Nehammer has announced his intention to resign after coalition talks between his conservative Austrian People's Party and the center-left Social Democrats collapsed over the budget.
Nehammer has ruled out working with Kickl, but others within his party are less adamant. Earlier Sunday, the People's Party nominated its general secretary, Christian Stocker, as interim leader, but the president said Nehammer would remain chancellor for now.
Van der Bellen said that he had spent several hours talking to key officials, after which he got the impression that “the voices within the People's Party who exclude working with the Freedom Party under its leader Herbert Kickl have become quieter.”
The president said that this development has “potentially opened a new path," which has prompted him to invite Kickl for a meeting on Monday morning.
Kickl's Freedom Party topped the polls in the autumn's national election with 29.2% of the vote, but Van der Bellen tasked Nehammer with putting together a new government because no other party was willing to work with Kickl.
That decision drew heavy criticism from the Freedom Party and its supporters, with Kickl saying that it was “not right and not logical” that he did not get a mandate to form a government.
Stocker addressed reporters on Sunday afternoon and confirmed that he had been appointed “unanimously” by his party to serve as interim leader. “I am very honored and happy,” he said.
He also welcomed the decision by the president to meet with Kickl and said that he now expects that the leader of the party that emerged as the clear winner from the last election would be tasked with forming a government.
“If we are invited to negotiations to form a government, we will accept this invitation,” Stocker added.
In the past, Stocker has criticized Kickl, calling him a “security risk” for the country.
In its election program titled “Fortress Austria,” the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an emergency law.
The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of Western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany. The Freedom Party has also signed a friendship agreement in 2016 with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party that it now claims has expired.
Kickl has criticized “elites” in Brussels and called for some powers to be brought back from the European Union to Austria.
Austria was thrown into political turmoil on Friday after the liberal party Neos pulled out of coalition talks with the People's Party and the Social Democrats.
On Saturday the two remaining parties, who have only a one-seat majority in Parliament, made another attempt to form a government — but that also ended in failure after a few hours, with negotiators saying they were unable to agree on how to repair the budget deficit.
