Austria’s interim leader Alexander Schallenberg is in Brussels on Monday to reassure the EU’s top leaders that his country will remain a reliable partner, as hardline right-winger Herbert Kickl bids to form a government in Vienna.
“Austria is and will remain a reliable, constructive and strong partner in the European Union and around the world,” Schallenberg told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook ahead of his visit.
“That was true for previous governments, it is true for this government and it should remain so in the next government,” he added.
Schallenberg, Austria’s foreign minister and member of the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), took over as interim chancellor on Friday, after Karl Nehammer resigned on Jan. 4 over the breakdown of coalition talks among Vienna’s mainstream parties.
Following Nehammer’s resignation, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen gave Kickl, leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), the task of forming a new government.
Kickl’s party won the most seats in the National Assembly in last September’s elections, but the FPÖ was initially blocked from forming a government with all other major parties refusing to work with it.
If Kickl — who is expected to cozy up to the Kremlin and pursue hardline policies in areas like migration — successfully forms a government he would become Austria’s new chancellor and the country’s first far-right leader since the end of World War II.
According to Schallenberg, however, the EU should not worry about Kickl.
Even if he emerges successful from the talks on forming a new coalition government, his power would be curtailed by a coalition agreement with the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), as well as parameters set by Van der Bellen, Schallenberg told Brussels Playbook.
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