Austria’s mainstream politicians are combining to ensure that the winners of last month’s general elections, the far right Freedom party (FPO) are kept firmly out of power.
The Alpine republic’s president, Alexander Van Den Bellen – aligned with the Green party – has invited the current chancellor, Karl Nehammer, whose centre right People’s party (OVP) came second in the elections, to form a coalition explicitly excluding the FPO, which topped the polls with 29 per cent, running on an anti-immigration, pro-Putin platform.
Nehammer is now likely to form a ‘grand coalition’
Austria is the latest European ‘domino’ to propel a populist radical right party to the forefront of politics after the rise of the AfD in neighbouring Germany. Similar parties are already in government in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy leads a right-wing coalition, and in Sweden and the Netherlands where Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Party of Freedom (PVV) also forms part of the ruling coalition.
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