Austria's conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Saturday, January 4, he would step down in the "coming days" after breaking off coalition talks with the Social Democrats over disagreements on key issues.
Nehammer made the announcements late on Saturday in a video message and accompanying statement posted on the X platform. "After the break-off of the coalition talks I am going to do the following: I will step down both as chancellor and party chairman of the People's Party in the coming days and enable an orderly transition," he said.
The development comes just one day after Austria's liberal party withdrew from three-party coalition talks to form a centrist government. The aim had been to sideline the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) that topped the vote.
The FPÖ won 28.8 percent of the vote but has been unable to find partners to form a national government in the Alpine EU member state. The conservative People's Party (ÖVP) came second with 26.3 percent, while the center-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) won 21.1 percent. That led Nehammer to pursue talks with the SPÖ and the liberal party NEOS to form a government to shut out the far right, but those three-way talks collapsed on Friday.
The remaining two parties had vowed to continue their work, but after just one day Nehammer announced on X that "agreement with the SPÖ is not possible on key issues. "We are therefore ending negotiations with the SPÖ."
Nehammer said he had aimed to be "the force of the political center in order to build a bulwark against the radicals. "It is my deep conviction that radicals do not offer a solution to a single problem, but only live by describing problems," he added. "This is bad for Austria and it is bad for the people in our country," he said. He "always stood for stability", he added – even if that was "not sexy in politics".
On Friday, President Alexander Van der Bellen called on the ÖVP and SPÖ to form a government "without delay". Van der Bellen had initially tasked the conservatives with forming a stable government that respects the "foundations of our liberal democracy." In the past, he has voiced reservations about the FPÖ's radical leader Herbert Kickl.
A three-party governing coalition would have been a first since 1949 in Austria, which faces a flagging economy and a ballooning budget deficit. Nehammer had already warned that the coalition talks, which began in October – initially without the liberals – would be an uphill task.
The ÖVP has ruled the Alpine country of nine million since 1987. But it has already governed twice with the FPÖ as junior partners – in 2000 and again in 2017. While Nehammer said he was open to talks with the FPÖ, he has repeatedly ruled out working with Kickl.