Hundreds of protestersFPÖÖVP)SPÖ)NEOSFPÖ FPÖ MPÖVP SPÖ ÖVP ÖVP FPÖ LGBT EU FPÖEU ÖVPÖVPFPÖEU GDP ÖVP FPÖÖVPFPÖ FPÖ ÖVP Your browser does not support the element. gathered on January 6th in front of Vienna’s imperial Hofburg palace. These days, as well as being a vast museum, it is the residence and office of Austria’s president, and the protesters were crying “” and “Van der Bellen, kick him out!” In one of its resplendent rooms, adorned with patterned red fabric wallpaper and a prominently displayed portrait of Empress Maria Theresa, Alexander Van der Bellen, Austria’s president, was meeting Herbert Kickl, the leader of the hard-right Freedom Party (), to ask him to try to form Austria’s next government.Mr Van der Bellen, a former leader of the Green party, said he had not taken the decision to turn to Mr Kickl lightly. But he had been left with no choice. For three months after parliamentary elections at the end of September, Karl Nehammer, the incumbent chancellor, strove to form a coalition consisting of his centre-right People’s Party (, the centre-left Social Democratic Party ( and the small liberal party to keep the out of power. The had won more seats than any other party at the election, with 31% ofs; the had come second with 28% and the third with 22%. Talks between the three parties broke down on January 3rd owing to disagreements over economic and fiscal policies. The next day Mr Nehammer announced his resignation.Is Mr Kickl now a shoo-in for the chancellorship? Although the centrist parties tried to exclude him, his party has in the past taken part in five governments as a junior partner and is in government in five of Austria’s nine states. Despite vowing not to govern with Mr Kickl during the election campaign, the is now willing to try. Christian Stocker, who has taken over as the interim leader, used to be one of his party’s harshest critics of the strongman. “Mr Kickl, nobody in this house wants you. Nobody in this republic needs you either,” said Mr Stocker in parliament in December.Mr Kickl is anti-immigration, anti-Islam, strongly Eurosceptic and dismissive of Austria’s community. In his party’s election programme, “Fortress Austria”, he has called for the “re-migration of uninvited foreigners” and for a halt to accepting new asylum-seekers via an emergency decree, which would breach rules. He is credited with inventing the most controversial slogans, such as “instead of Islam” ( is Austrian dialect for “home”).An accidental party leader, Mr Kickl was meant to be the power behind the throne rather than the man seated on it. Short, bespectacled and dull, he failed to complete his philosophy degree and his military service. Rather than knocking back beers and tucking into a schnitzel in a pub, the stick-thin Mr Kickl prefers to drink water. More a lone wolf than a team player, he has competed in extreme triathlons such as “the Celtman” in Scotland and “the Evergreen” in Chamonix.Most Austrian commentators assume that Mr Kickl is close to achieving his goal of becoming (the people’s chancellor), a term he insists on using even though critics point out that Adolf Hitler used to campaign as a too. “It is very likely that Kickl will be chancellor,” says Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik of the University of Vienna. On economic policy, social policy and immigration, the campaign platforms of the two main right-wing parties largely converge. Both would cut corporate taxes and social contributions by employers, and reduce benefits for asylum-seekers and migrants. Both would also ban the Muslim headscarf in public.But serious sticking-points remain, especially in foreign and security policy. These include Austrian aid for Ukraine (which Mr Kickl wants to stop), sanctions against Russia (which Mr Kickl would vote against) and the European Sky Shield initiative, a German-led air-defence procurement plan, which the backs but which Mr Kickl sees as a threat to Austria’s neutrality. Other scratchy areas are compensation payments related to policies during the covid-19 pandemic (Mr Kickl opposed covid-19 vaccinations) and the public-broadcast licence fee, which Mr Kickl wants to abolish.The worst problem at home is the poor health of Austria’s public finances. The and the will need to find €6bn ($6.2bn) in annual spending cuts by mid-January if Austria is to avoid the humiliation of being placed under close supervision by the European Commission through its excessive-deficit procedure. (Eight countries are already under such scrutiny.) The forecasts a budget deficit of 3.7% of for Austria this year, well above the 3% prescribed by the union.Kathrin Stainer-Hämmerle of the Technical College in Kärnten thinks it is still possible that talks between the and will fail, and that new elections will have to be called. She found the tone of Mr Kickl’s statement to the press on January 7th to be far from conciliatory. He warned the to employ “no games, no tricks, no sabotage and no obstructionism”. Moreover, Mr Stocker is a wily negotiator who will not easily give ground over his party’s fundamental foreign and security policies.Even so, according to polls, the will do still better if snap elections are held. , Austria’s largest-circulation tabloid, published a poll on January 5th that put the at 37% of the vote, which would give them around 40% of the seats in parliament. That should focus the minds of the ’snegotiators.
