Alexander Schallenberg will serve as Austria's interim leader after Chancellor Karl Nehammer's resignation, as the far-right Freedom Party begins efforts to form a coalition government.
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg will serve as the country’s interim leader while the far-right Freedom Party attempts to put together a new coalition government, the president’s office said Wednesday.
Schallenberg, 55, will take on the duties of outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who announced his resignation over the weekend after his efforts to put together a coalition without the Freedom Party collapsed. Nehammer plans to step down on Friday.
President Alexander Van der Bellen’s office said in a statement that the head of state will formally task Schallenberg with “continuing the management of the chancellery and leading the interim government.”
It will be Schallenberg’s second — and, again, likely brief — stint as Austria’s leader. Schallenberg served as chancellor for less than two months in late 2021 after Sebastian Kurz resigned, before passing the job to Nehammer and returning to the Foreign Ministry.
The anti-immigration, euroskeptic and Russia-friendly Freedom Party won Austria’s parliamentary election in September, but was initially shunned by other parties.
After Nehammer announced his resignation, his conservative Austrian People’s Party made an abrupt U-turn on its previous refusal to contemplate working with the Freedom Party under its leader, Herbert Kickl.
On Monday, Kickl received a mandate to try to form what would be the first national government led by the far right since World War II. That’s a process that could take weeks or months, and isn’t guaranteed to succeed.
Schallenberg has said he wouldn’t stay in the government under Kickl.
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev welcomed a Croatian delegation led by Gordan Jandroković, Speaker of the Croatian Parliament, ma...
A new stage of economic transformation is under way in Karakalpakstan, where authorities have announced 27 large-scale projects worth nearly $2 billio...
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Richar...
Czech Republic election winner ANO hopes to conclude negotiations with two small parties on forming a new government by the beginning of November, par...
Hamas said on Wednesday (8 October) it had exchanged a list of the names of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners to be released under a swap dea...
The glitz and the glamour of extremely popular live TV broadcast of The Eurovision Song Contest 2026 will take place in Vienna in Austria again, marking the city’s third time hosting the event after 1967 and 2015.
A man opened fire in the Austrian town of Traiskirchen on Sunday, killing one person and seriously wounding another before taking his own life, police said.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen on Friday called for reforms to global governance bodies and pledged to strengthen bilateral cooperation.
Australia has confirmed a $1.3 billion missile deal with the U.S., highlighting its defence priorities, while stopping short of committing to Washington’s 3.5% GDP spending target.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least eight people have died and more than 90 others were injured following a catastrophic gas tanker explosion on a major highway in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district on Wednesday, authorities confirmed.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on 13 September with no tsunami threat, coming just weeks after the region endured a devastating 8.8-magnitude quake — the strongest since 1952.
Authorities in California have identified the dismembered body discovered in a Tesla registered to singer D4vd as 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who had been missing from Lake Elsinore since April 2024.
Czech Republic election winner ANO hopes to conclude negotiations with two small parties on forming a new government by the beginning of November, party leader Andrej Babis said on Wednesday (8 October).
Türkiye on Wednesday slammed an intervention by Israeli forces against a flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as an act of piracy and a violation of international law.
Caretaker French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu struck a cautiously optimistic tone on Wednesday (8 October), saying a deal could potentially be reached on the country's budget by year end, making the risk of a snap election more remote.
Four people have been confirmed dead after a six-storey building collapsed in central Madrid while being converted into a hotel, authorities said, following a 15-hour rescue effort involving drones and sniffer dogs.
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief: here are the top news stories for the 8th of October, covering the latest developments you need to know.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment