Christian Stocker is seen as an experienced and calm crisis communicator who has frequently appeared in Austrian media to defend controversial decisions. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Austrian People’s Party on Sunday (January 5, 2025) nominated its General Secretary Christian Stocker as interim leader after the expected resignation of Chancellor Karl Nehammer, Austrian news agency APA reported.

Mr. Nehammer announced Saturday (January 4, 2025) he would resign in the next few days after coalition talks with the Social Democrats collapsed.

Mr. Stocker, a lawyer and member of the Austrian Parliament, has served as General Secretary of the People’s Party since 2022. He is seen as an experienced and calm crisis communicator who has frequently appeared in Austrian media to defend controversial decisions.

It is not clear yet who will become acting chancellor until a new government is formed.

Protected by special police forces, Mr. Nehammer walked across the square from the Chancellery toward the president’s office in Vienna.

“What is important for me is that the way of stability and the center can be continued,” he said.

Austria’s President Alexander Van der Bellen will make a public statement to announce the next steps once the meeting with Mr. Nehammer is over.

The 52-year-old Nehammer became chancellor and conservative party leader in 2021, after his predecessor Sebastian Kurz was forced to stand down following allegations of corruption.

In April 2022, Mr. Nehammer became the first European leader to visit Moscow and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the invasion of Ukraine in February that year. Before going to Moscow, he also met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

Austria was thrown into political turmoil on Friday (January 3, 2025) after the liberal party NEOS pulled out of coalition talks with the center-left Social Democrats and the conservative People’s Party.

On Saturday (January 4, 2025), the two remaining parties, who have a razor-thin majority in Parliament, made another attempt to negotiate and form a government — but this effort also ended in failure after a few hours, with negotiators saying they were unable to agree on how to repair the budget deficit.

Vienna:

Austria’s ruling conservatives picked Secretary-General Christian Stocker as interim successor to Chancellor Karl Nehammer, Austrian media reported on Sunday, after Nehammer quit as his attempts to form a coalition government without the far right fell apart.

There was no immediate comment from the People’s Party (OVP), and Nehammer only told reporters after the party’s crisis leadership meeting on Sunday that “important and correct decisions” had been taken.

The surprise collapse of three- and then two-party talks aimed at cobbling together a centrist coalition that could serve as a bulwark against the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) after the FPO came first in September’s parliamentary election leaves President Alexander Van der Bellen with few options.

A snap election with support for the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO still growing or an about-face in which Van der Bellen tasks FPO leader Herbert Kickl with forming a government are now the most likely options, with only limited scope for alternatives or playing for time.

“It is not an easy situation,” Markus Wallner, the governor of Vorarlberg, the westernmost of Austria’s nine provinces, told reporters before the OVP leadership meeting at the chancellor’s office on Sunday morning.

“I believe we must do everything we can now to avoid sliding towards a national crisis.”

Wallner said he opposed a snap election since that would delay the arrival of a new government by months. OVP governors are part of the leadership.

A spokesperson for Van der Bellen said he was due to address the nation at 2:45 p.m. (1345 GMT). Nehammer crossed the road separating their offices earlier to report to Van der Bellen on the OVP leadership meeting.

Nehammer insisted during and after the election campaign that his party would not govern with Kickl because he was too much of a conspiracy theorist and posed a security risk while at the same time saying much of Kickl’s party was trustworthy.

Nehammer’s successor will most likely be more open to a coalition with the FPO, which is formally allied with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party.

GROWING SUPPORT FOR FPO

The FPO won September’s election with around 29% of the vote, and opinion polls suggest its support has only grown since then, extending its lead over the OVP and Social Democrats to more than 10 percentage points while their support has shrunk.

The OVP and FPO overlap on various issues, particularly taking a tough line on immigration, to the point that the FPO has accused the OVP of stealing its ideas.

The two governed together from late 2017 until 2019, when a video-sting scandal involving the then-leader of the FPO prompted their coalition’s collapse. At the state level, they govern together in five of nine states, including in OVP moderate Wallner’s Vorarlberg.

The national dynamic is now different because if they were to form an alliance the OVP would for the first time be junior partner to the FPO, making the position of OVP leader difficult and undesirable to many.

After initial media reports that household names like former party leader Sebastian Kurz, who led the last coalition with the FPO and has since been convicted of perjury, could become OVP leader, Austrian media reported overnight that they were no longer in the running.

That left lesser-known figures such as new Chamber of Commerce Secretary-General Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, 45.

Meanwhile, the FPO hammered home its message.

“Austria needs a Chancellor Kickl now,” it said on X.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)