By Francois Murphy
VIENNA (Reuters) – The road ahead in coalition talks between Austria’s two main centrist parties will be long and most likely “very rocky” at times, conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who is leading the talks, said on Friday as they began.
The far-right Freedom Party (FPO) won last month’s parliamentary election for the first time in its history but, with just 29% of the vote, it would have needed a coalition partner to command a majority in parliament and form a government, and no other party said it wanted to govern with it.
President Alexander Van der Bellen, a former leader of the left-wing Greens who as head of state oversees the formation of governments, angered the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO on Tuesday by tasking Nehammer, whose party came second, with assembling a coalition rather than the election winner.
“We have a long, probably also an often very rocky road ahead of us,” Nehammer told reporters after he and a handful of officials from his People’s Party (OVP) held their first meeting with a team from the Social Democrats (SPO).
As is typical in coalition talks, the opening round touched on issues they plan to cover and the logistics of future talks, which will eventually be divided up by subject. Nehammer has said he wants to make the economy and immigration his two top priorities, which he repeated on Friday.
Even if they manage to bridge their significant differences on issues like taxing the wealthy, the OVP and SPO would together have a majority of just one seat, and Nehammer has said he plans to bring a third party on board. That would further complicate talks that usually take two or three months.
Speaking at a separate news conference just before Nehammer, SPO leader Andreas Babler struck a more optimistic note.
“Today’s discussion gave me a very positive sense that these negotiations, if they continue in such a trusting manner, can very well lead to the formation of a government,” he said.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
