Austrian centrist parties reach deal to form government

Austria's three top centrist parties in parliament have reached a deal to form a coalition government without the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) and plan to present it later on Thursday, five months after the FPO won the last parliamentary election.

The deal should bring to a close the longest wait for a new government in Austria since World War Two. A first attempt to form a ruling coalition with the same three parties collapsed in January, after which the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO was tasked with forming a government but also failed to.

The conservative People's Party (OVP), Social Democrats (SPO) and liberal Neos said they would publish their joint government programme at a news conference at 11 a.m. (1000 GMT).

The three-party government, Austria's first since the late 1940s, is due to take office next week, provided all parties sign off on the deal, the chief hurdle being a vote of Neos members on Sunday, at which a two-thirds majority is required.

FPO leader Herbert Kickl has dismissed the tie-up as a "coalition of losers" and called for a snap election that opinion polls suggest would increase his party's share of the vote further from around 29% in September.

The coalition will be under pressure to deliver results including shrinking the budget deficit and avoid the kind of in-fighting that has felled previous governments.

"The first message this government has is 'We are not Herbert Kickl, we prevented Herbert Kickl (from becoming chancellor)'," political analyst Thomas Hofer said.
"That's something, but it isn't a forward-looking narrative," he said, adding they would likely need to produce more than the programme to survive the five-year parliament.

The FPO often likens the centrist effort to the three-party coalition in neighbouring Germany that recently collapsed.

Copied