Austria's president seeks a solution after other parties say they won't work with the far right

VIENNA -- Austria's president on Wednesday asked the country's three strongest political parties to hold talks on possible cooperation after an election won by the far-right Freedom Party, but dispensed with a tradition of giving the winner the task of trying to form the new government after others said they wouldn't work with it.

President Alexander Van der Bellen asked Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl, current Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the conservative Austrian People's Party and Andreas Babler of the center-left Social Democrats to report back to him at the end of next week.

Whoever leads the next government will need to build a coalition to have a parliamentary majority. Nehammer and his party have said they wouldn't work with Kickl in government. The other three parties in the new parliament have said they wouldn't work with the Freedom Party at all.

“It's completely new that there is an election winner with whom apparently none of the other parties want to govern,” Van der Bellen told reporters after meeting with all the party leaders in recent days. He said Kickl told him that his party would go into government “only with him as chancellor.”

The president, who ultimately will have to swear in a new government, said he wants “clarity for Austria” on whether all concerned mean what they have said. He asked the leaders of the biggest three parties “to clear up whether, and what, mutual cooperation would be conceivable in principle.”

Van der Bellen said the idea was to find a way out of the stalemate and avoid “wasting valuable time.”

There is no formal deadline for forming a new government.

The Freedom Party finished first in the Sept. 29 election with 28.8% of the vote, ahead of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which took 26.3%. The Social Democrats were third with 21.1%. The outgoing governing coalition of Nehammer's party and the environmentalist Greens lost its majority.

The Freedom Party tapped into anxieties about immigration, inflation, Russia’s war in Ukraine and other issues to secure its best-ever result. It previously served as the junior partner in governments led by the People’s Party.

Kickl, a 55-year-old with a taste for provocation who has been the Freedom Party leader since 2021, could be its chief impediment to taking power this time.

If Kickl can’t form a government, the alternative would be a coalition led by the People’s Party with the center-left Social Democrats and likely the smaller liberal Neos party.

___

Moulson reported from Berlin.