Three games concluded on Thursday to form a new centrist Austrian government, two weeks after a far -right party which won an election In September, failed to set up an administration.
The Austrian Conservative People’s Party, the Social Democrats of the Center-Gauche and the liberal people agreed with a coalition program after what Christian Stocker, who should become Chancellor, called “perhaps the most difficult negotiations on a government in the history of our country”.
Three weeks ago, politicians in the country broke a 129-day post-second world war record to form a new government dated 1962.
Migration, economy and extremism
“The challenges are historic and large -scale,” said the new leader of the People’s Party, stressing the current war in Ukraine, an Grinking Austrian budget and migration pressure – a long -level number in Austrian politics.
The coalition agreement provides for new strict asylum rules in the country of the European Union of 9 million people. He plans to set up “return centers” to asylum seekers rejected at home and to suspend family reunion. Storing said that the new government “will reserve the right to impose an asylum frost” if the number of asylum applications increases.
The agreement includes a “compulsory integration program” for all asylum research in Austria, which will include tuition fees in the language and values as well as community service.
Storing also announced that the three parties had agreed to work on a ban on the scarf for girls under the age of 14 to prevent “segregation and repression”.
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Andreas Babler, the head of the social democrats, stressed the need to repair the budget deficit of Austria and said that “wider shoulders can carry heavier loads”. He said the agreement included a levy from the banks.
Austria faces an increase in unemployment and a third year of recession. It is under pressure from the EU to save billions of euros.
Babler said the new government will endeavor to “suppress the reproduction ground for radicalization and extremism” after a recent deadly stab by an alleged Islamic extremist. He said he would seek “quick solutions” to ensure that social media platforms are taking greater responsibility.
It was the second attempt of the three traditional parties to form a new government without the far-right party, anti-immigration and Euroskeptic freedom, which, in the Austrian elections, emerged for the first time the strongest political force. It took 28.8% of the vote.
Their first effort collapsed in early January, which prompted the resignation of the conservative of the allegage of the time, Karl Nehammer – and prepared the land for the president of Austria to ask the leader of the Liberty Party Herbert Kickl to try to form a government.
Kickl’s own attempt to constitute a coalition with the festival of the people, which finished second in the elections, collapsed in mutual recriminations on February 12. The general public parties, which had to face the risk of a new election which was unlikely to make them favors, resumed their efforts to find common ground.
“The most expensive government of all time presents the worst program of all time,” said Kickl on Thursday in an article on the social platform X. “A low point for Austria!”
Storing, 64, heads for the Chancellery as one of the most unlikely politicians to date to become the country leader – a position for which he was not presented when the Austrians voted in September.
He spent a large part of his career as a local politician in the Bas-Austria province before entering the National Parliament in 2019. The highest elected post he occupied so far was that of the deputy mayor of Wiener Neustadt, south of Vienna. But he became an experienced crisis director as secretary general of the People’s Party, a position he adopted in 2022.
When he became a party leader last month, Storing went back and participated in coalition talks with Kickl, under which his party had previously refused to work – but fell back on Kickl’s requests and blamed his “attitude” to sabarate negotiations.
The coalition agreement presented on Thursday says that the parties of the new government are “attached to the European Union as the largest peace project of all time”. This adds that Austria will continue to participate in the European Sky Shield missile initiative, which Kickl’s party wanted to leave.
Why is it a government with three parties?
The outgoing government, a coalition of the People’s Party and the Greens Ecologists, now led by the interim chancellor Alexander Schallenberg, has remained in place on a goalkeeper since the elections.
The People’s Party and the Social Democrats often governed Austria together in the past, but have the vast majority as possible in Parliament elected in September, with a 92 of the 183 combined seats.
This was largely considered to be too small a cushion, so the two parties sought to call on neos, which have 18 seats and have not already joined a national government.
The agreement still needs official approval by the management of the two larger parties and a majority of two -thirds of the members of the Neos, during an expected agreement on Sunday.
–Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press