{"id":415552,"date":"2025-01-03T18:09:01","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T17:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/01\/03\/austria-negoziati-governo-neos\/"},"modified":"2025-01-03T20:31:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T19:31:29","slug":"negotiations-to-give-austria-a-government-are-stalled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/01\/03\/negotiations-to-give-austria-a-government-are-stalled\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiations to give Austria a government are stalled"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels\u00a0– Negotiations to form a government in Austria<\/strong> have reached a dead end. On Friday (Jan. 3),\u00a0the liberal Neos party pulled out of the negotiations<\/strong> to create\u00a0a three-way coalition executive,<\/strong> citing disagreements with the conservatives and socialists and leaving it in the hands of these two political forces to keep the pro-Russian far-right<\/strong> out of the control rooms. But, numbers in hand, the road is all uphill.<\/p>\n

Deadlock in Vienna.\u00a0Talks to give the country a government<\/strong>, which began after last Sept. 29 elections<\/a> in which the far-right post-Nazi, ultranationalist and pro-Kremlin Freedom Party (Fp\u00f6)<\/strong>, led by Herbert Kickl<\/strong>, came in first with more than 29 per cent of the vote<\/strong>, which translated into 58 seats (nearly one-third of the House’s 183 total), were blown\u00a0this morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

The one who pulled the plug on the negotiations, which lasted more than three months, was the liberal Neos<\/strong> party, which, with its 17 elected members (8.1 per cent of the vote in the polls), is the smallest among the political forces that were trying to find a solution to hold the cordon sanitaire against the Fp\u00f6: the Populars of the \u00d6vp<\/strong> \u2014the party from which outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer<\/strong> comes and which has been governing Austria since 1987\u2014and the Social Democrats of the Sp\u00f6<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Karl<\/a>
Outgoing federal chancellor Karl Nehammer (photo: European Union)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beate Meinl-Reisinger<\/strong>, the leader of Neos, has explained<\/a>\u00a0the decision by claiming that no further progress<\/strong> could be made in talks with the \u00d6vp and Sp\u00f6, as the three parties had failed to agree on a plan for “fundamental reforms<\/strong>.” One of the breaking points, according to the liberals<\/a>, would have been the unwillingness of their interlocutors to reform the national pension system by raising the retirement age<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Together, conservatives and socialists can count on 92 deputies<\/strong>, precisely the threshold at which the absolute majority in the hemicycle<\/strong> is set. This number leaves little room for manoeuvre and would make government action particularly complex. According to Meinl-Reisinger’s statement, negotiations between the \u00d6vp and Sp\u00f6 continue<\/strong>, while Neos would still be ready to support in parliament the measures on which it had already secured support in recent months.<\/p>\n

But already in the moments following the liberals’ exit from the scene, \u00d6vp Secretary Christian Stocker<\/strong> laid the blame for the breakdown in negotiations on potential socialist allies, branding as “rearward” the most intransigent faction of the Sp\u00f6<\/strong> that was not open to compromise with Neos.<\/p>\n

The Populars could now test the waters<\/strong> with the Greens<\/strong>\u2014with whom they are currently in government\u2014to replace the centrists as the third leg of the executive<\/strong>. However, a return to the polls<\/strong> cannot be ruled out either, although such an outcome would mainly benefit Kickl’s far-right<\/strong>, which some polls currently give over 35 per cent of the vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The liberal Neos party has called itself out of talks underway for months in Vienna to put together a three-way coalition with Populars and Social Democrats, questioning the political forces’ ability to keep the far right out of the executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":415545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681,25727],"tags":[26897,30120,28344,28345,29079,30121,30122,30123],"class_list":["post-415552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-in-the-spotlight","tag-austria-en","tag-beate-menl-reisinger-en","tag-fpo-en","tag-herbert-kickl-en","tag-karl-nehammer-en","tag-neos-and","tag-ovp-and","tag-spo-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415552"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415559,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415552\/revisions\/415559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}