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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newspaper.
“No games, no tricks, no damage.” Herbert Kickl sounded like he was starting ransom talks instead of coalition talks last week after accepting the Austrian president’s approval to try to form a government three months after winning the election. of parliament.
The far-right leader undoubtedly has a whip in negotiations with the Center People’s Party (ÖVP), whose coalition efforts collapsed earlier this month. Any unrest, Kickl warned, would lead to new elections, with the polls suggesting a landslide victory for his Freedom Party (FPÖ) over the opposition.
Kickl won’t have it his way. The ÖVP insists on him to agree to protect the freedom of the press, maintain constructive relations with the EU and maintain support for Ukraine. But the center-right is not showing much backbone. Christian Stocker, the new leader of the ÖVP, last fall described Kickl’s FPÖ as “not only a threat to democracy, but a major threat to the security of Austria”. A few months later, there is no such compunction.
Austria is set to have its first long-distance chancellor since the second world war. It would be a logical development for the country, where Kickl’s party has taken part in three federal governments with the center right, although it has never been in the lead. But it will still be a historic discovery for the FPÖ, with translations beyond Austria.
It would become familiar and empower others a famous person nationalist movements in Europe. Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has often taken its cues from its hard-line Austrian counterpart. Alice Weidel, the AfD’s chancellor candidate, has recently embraced the idea of ”immigration” – the mass deportation of immigrants deemed to have failed to integrate, regardless of their citizenship status. This idea was first supported by the Austrian biologist Martin Sellner, which was taken up by Kickl and his party and adopted by the extreme wing of the AfD. When it emerged that a group of AfD politicians and activists attended a meeting with Sellner in November 2023 to discuss “immigration”, Weidel basically dismissed them. Now he has made this plan for himself.
Kickl it would strengthen a growing group of nationalist, Eurosceptic leaders in central Europe who, led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, appear determined to challenge the EU’s liberal establishment and its foreign policy pro-Ukraine. They could be joined by Andrej Babiš, a rebel on his way to winning parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic later this year. Nationalist Călin Georgescu could be re-elected as Romania’s president after his bid was annulled in December by the country’s legislature over what Romanian authorities said was a Russian-backed influence campaign. The trouble makers of Mitteleuropa may not always work in harmony but it is no longer possible to be excluded, let’s not ignore.
Kickl’s it is possible that the power will also highlight the weakness of the political center in Europe at the beginning of 2025. The main opposition parties to the far right or populist struggle to find common ground among themselves to govern successfully. The country’s financial crisis complicates the problem.
In Austria, Kickl was invited to form a government because the center-right disagreed with the center-left and liberals on how to reduce the social deficit. In France, the new government of François Bayrou is in limbo, awaiting a budget deal. Fundamental differences over debt rules began to boil over and spark Germany’s “traffic light” coalition, propelling the AfD to new heights.
Germany’s main party firewalls against power-sharing and far-rights remain intact – for now. But their ability to work together in the office will be greatly tested. The Christian Democrats, who have moved to the right under Friedrich Merz, are poised to win, but will have to work with the Social Democrats or the Greens, and possibly both, to form a coalition. Yet some of Merz’s allies are determined to scorn the Greens.
“Austria is an example of how things should not go,” said Greens chancellor candidate Robert Habeck. “If centrist parties can’t form alliances and dismiss compromise as the work of the devil, that helps radicals.”
“If we do not show the will to form democratic alliances, we face instability and the inability to act. Germany will not be able to do that, and we cannot expect Europe to accept it.”
Habeck is right. Compromise has become a dirty word in European politics. One that will never pass the lips of Herbert Kickl.
