MADRID 13 Nov. () –
The Austrian People’s Party (OVP), the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) and the liberal alliance NEOS have begun a historic round of three-way negotiations this Wednesday in an attempt to form a coalition government that will leave out the far-right Party of the Libertad (FPO), which won the elections last September but does not have sufficient support.
The tripartite talks have begun today after the NEOS-The New Austria and the Liberal Forum have joined the negotiations between the conservatives and the social democrats.
Its leader, Beate Meinl Reisinger, has expressed the “urgent need to reform the political agenda” to move the pacts forward, and has clarified that things cannot continue as they have been until now given the difficult economic situation that the country is going through.
For the moment, the OVP and the SPO need NEOS as a third partner to gain access to a larger majority given that between the two they would have a fragile majority and a margin of only one seat, according to information collected by the Austrian newspaper ‘Die Presse’.
These negotiations begin three weeks after the country’s president, Alexander van der Bellen, has finally given the interim chancellor, Karl Nehammer, the mandate to form a “stable, effective and integrity” coalition government, which is capable of “resolving the problems facing the country” given that no party has agreed to negotiate with the leader of the FPO, Herbert Kickl.
Van der Bellen stressed that these talks must take place in the “shortest period of time possible”, although he stressed that they can last “as long as necessary” to guarantee the stability of the country. “Elections are not a race in which the party that finishes first automatically forms a government,” he recalled in relation to the position of the FPO, which won.
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