By Francois Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) -Austrian far-right Freedom Party (FPO) leader Herbert Kickl called on the conservative People’s Party (OVP) to be “honest” in their imminent coalition talks or face the prospect of a snap election, with his support still rising and the OVP’s falling.
The eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO, an ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, won the last parliamentary election in September with around 29% of the vote but was initially sidelined as centrist parties attempted to form a coalition without it.
Those efforts collapsed at the weekend, prompting President Alexander van der Bellen to task Kickl with forming a government, giving Kickl a chance to become Austria’s first FPO chancellor since his party was founded in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker.
“Honest government must be preceded by honest negotiations,” Kickl said, adding: “No little games, no tricks, no sabotage.”
He also called on new, interim OVP leader Christian Stocker to ensure his party is stable and united, a reference to divisions that appear to have helped collapse the centrist coalition talks.
“If that is not the case, then … there will be snap election. We are prepared,” Kickl said, a clear threat given that opinion polls show FPO support has only risen since September while the OVP’s has fallen, with the gap growing to more than 10 percentage points.
Kickl’s statement, his first since Van der Bellen announced that he had tasked him with forming a government, was short on policy details.
He said he wanted a “massive political firefighting operation” to bring the Alpine republic’s finances under control but did not give specifics.
How to bring the budget deficit back within the European Union’s limit of 3% of economic output was the main sticking point in the centrist coalition talks.
It is unclear how the FPO and OVP would achieve that – they both prefer to trim government spending to raising taxes, but are wary of cutting big-ticket items like pensions.
Kickl said he would extend the invitation to talks to the OVP, his only potential coalition partner, after his party’s leadership signs off on the move on Tuesday evening, and that once the talks begin they should quickly establish whether a coalition is possible.
