Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

The Freedom Party and People’s Party's chances of forming a government in Austria look slim, hindered by differences over policy and the division of power

Credit: Buchhändler (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Servus!

Coalition negotiations between the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) are in breakdown. The discord between the two parties surfaced on Tuesday last week when the FPÖ gave the ÖVP a proposal for a future cabinet that would have seen the far-right run the interior and finance ministries and control the Europe, constitution, culture, and media portfolios under the umbrella of the federal chancellery.

This was an attempt at an enormous power grab on the part of the FPÖ. Such a division of ministries and portfolios would have tremendous implications for Austria’s police and security services, its place in the European Union, artistic freedom, and the freedom of the press. The FPÖ was also clearly trying to show the ÖVP who the senior partner is in these negotiations. The far-right were attempting to wrestle away from the ÖVP two keystone ministries—interior and finance—that the party has run as fiefdoms more-or-less since 2000 and 2007 respectively¹.

The ÖVP took the FPÖ’s offer as an affront. Late Tuesday evening, they temporarily broke off talks while interim party leader Christian Stocker consulted with party bigwigs and President Alexander Van der Bellen. After two days, the ÖVP slouched back to the negotiating table. On Friday, Stocker and Kickl sat down for a meeting that lasted around 40 minutes before the two leaders broke for lunch. Additional meetings on Monday and Tuesday went nowhere. On Wednesday morning, the FPÖ presented what they termed their final offer for how ministries could be divided up, which the ÖVP rejected; the the FPÖ also turned down the ÖVP’s counteroffer.

If there is a pathway forward remains unclear. The interior ministry, which not only commands the the police and security services but Austria’s immigration services, has become a red line issue for both parties. But the causes of this breakdown go beyond the question of who should run which ministries. As the leaked minutes of coalition negotiations indicate, there remain deep and meaningful divisions on policy matters too. At stake are Austria’s constitution, justice system, Europe and foreign policy, and membership of the rules-based international order as well as fundamental rights like freedom of speech, assembly, and of the press.

---

Thank you for reading The Vienna Briefing. Nothing beats a personal recommendation; if you know someone who would be interested in reading this newsletter, consider sharing it with them today.

The Vienna Briefing is a reader-supported publication. Your one-time or monthly tips make my work on this newsletter possible and help keep The Vienna Briefing free for everyone.

---

Take foreign policy as an example. The transcript—a coalition agreement in progress—shows how the FPÖ wants to: review Austria’s participation in sanctions against Russia, obstruct EU accession talks with Ukraine and the western Balkans, renegotiate the EU’s migration pact, undermine international courts’ jurisdiction, reevaluate Austria’s signature to international agreements, step away from the WHO’s treaty on pandemic prevention, and eliminate the right to asylum in the EU in practice. To all these policies, the ÖVP has raised objections, the minutes show. The FPÖ, meanwhile, has said no to an ÖVP proposal to uphold Austria’s historical responsibility towards Israel.

On the media, the FPÖ would like to transform the public broadcaster’s leadership structure, eliminating the post of general director, to be replaced by a committee “modelled after a public limited company.” Its board of trustees would be appointed by parliament, and its funding would no longer come from the license fee but rather the state budget. Public funding for media organizations would no longer be tied to the quality of the publication’s work, and support for bodies like press clubs and journalistic educational institutes would be eliminated. The overall picture is a far-right attempt to undermine free and critical media, one to which the ÖVP is, so far, objecting.

The transcript shows how the FPÖ has sought to conduct coalition negotiations by adopting a series of maximalist demands as if they were the 35 percent party the polls indicate they could be and not the 29 percent party they are per September’s election. Its proposal to keep nearly all the key ministries and portfolios for itself is in keeping with that spirit. Their demands and proposals have a clear ideological tendency: to centralise power in the FPÖ’s hands, wielding it to transform the very nature of the Austrian state by engaging in a process of Orbánization, taking Austria down the road to illiberal democracy.

The ÖVP, meanwhile, having walked away from negotiations with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) to talk to Kickl, finds itself in an impossible position of its own making. To sign a coalition agreement with the FPÖ would be to slaughter a herd of sacred cows; to walk away from the negotiating table a second time since the election would further erode the party’s standing and guarantee fresh elections the FPÖ would likely win. Moreover, the ÖVP’s entire justification for breaking its promise not to negotiate with Kickl has turned out to be an empty one. Far from building a competent coalition that can govern the country, beneath the FPÖ-ÖVP partnership is a foundation of distrust, making it bound to collapse sooner rather than later.

Bis bald!

---

Vienna will hold state and local elections (Gemeinderats- und Bezirksvertretungswahlen) on April 27, 2025. If you are an Austrian citizen, were born on or before April 27, 2009, and have Vienna as your registered primary residence (Hauptwohnsitz), you are eligible to vote. EU citizens born on or before April 27, 2009, whose primary residence is Vienna are eligible to vote in local elections (Bezirksvertretungswahlen) only. Eligible voters can check their registration by examining the electoral roll, which will be posted in paper format on your apartment building’s notice board in February. Those who wish to vote via post can make an application using the following link.

1. The ÖVP’s control of the interior ministry was interrupted from 2017 and 2019 by the FPÖ in the guise of one Herbert Kickl.