All the President's Schemes: 'Our Democracy™' in Action--in Austria

Negotiations for a centre-right gov't failed on Wednesday, now there's talk about a caretaker gov't to avoid elections: saving 'our democracy™' is as coherent as f****** for virginity

And thus the technocratic push to fundamentally alter the contract between the people and those who govern them (known as constitution) continues:

Negotiations between the winner of last September’s elections (the ‘far-right™’ Freedom Party) and the turquoise revolutionaries (the conservative-in-name-only People’s Party) broke down on Wednesday.

This is a follow-up to the below posting:

Understanding Western Governance, or: how to legally subvert the constitution

The main aspect of what just transpired in Austria on Wednesday and Thursday is encapsulated in what alt-media outlet eXXpress noted ten days ago:

An agreement between the FPÖ and ÖVP will not be reached, but new elections with an expected landslide victory for the Freedom Party are to be avoided and therefore a government of experts [sic] will be set up again, but it should last longer: two years. It remains to be seen how this will be communicated to the citizens…

That was posted on 4 Feb. 2025, and now this has come to pass. How are the polls right now? Well, see for yourself:

I found the above graphic in this piece in tabloid Österreich (dated 13 Feb. 2025), which used a singularly misleading, if not surprising, header: ‘FPÖ leads, but its descent continues’—and I’ll merely delimit myself to pointing to last September’s election results (via the Parliament’s homepage):

Yep, legacy media now tells you that the blue-coded FPÖ—whose numbers increased from >29% to 33% since the elections—are ‘declining’. This deceptive ‘reporting™’ is merely cushioned by the small-print note that ‘the sudden end of the coalition negotiations [between FPÖ and ÖVP that was announced] on Wednesday has not yet been included in the poll’.

Where do you think, dear readers, that the polls will go once that will be included? To find out, let’s learn what derailed the negotiations in the first place.

FPÖ Leader Kickl: ‘ÖVP Wanted More’

Some details were presented by FPÖ chairman Herbert Kickl in a rather exasperated press briefing on Wednesday (which virtually all German-language legacy media reported™ on in essentially identical words), with a lot of vitriol revolving around the Ministry of Interior position that was claimed by both FPÖ and ÖVP (with my personal suspicion being the former wanted to crack down on migration and the latter to safeguard their own).

Let’s figure out what derailed the talks, courtesy of eXXpress once more (12 Feb. 2025; here and below, my translation, emphases, and [snark]):

He had remained silent for weeks so as not to jeopardise the coalition negotiations, explained FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl on Wednesday evening. But now the public needed to know the truth: the ÖVP insisted on six ministries—because they always got them even with an SPÖ chancellor…

It was to be expected that Kickl would blame the People’s Party—but the wealth of details he revealed came as a surprise. After weeks of silence, the public must now find out what really happened, he explained.

‘At first I thought they can’t be serious’

Kickl began by repeating a central criticism: ‘Since the beginning of February, negotiations revolved mainly been about ministries—not about differences of substance. The ÖVP wanted to clarify the ministerial issue first and only then talk about substantive issues.’ Although agreement had already been reached on some points, instead of resolving the outstanding issues, the People’s Party had focussed on the distribution of portfolios. ‘I bowed to this wish’, admitted Kickl, although he originally wanted to clarify the substantive issues first or at least negotiate them in parallel. Because behind the question of who gets which portfolio, there is always the question of prioritising content.

In a personal conversation, he therefore asked ÖVP leader Christian Stocker directly about the People’s Party’s specific proposals. The answer: there are five ministries that are ‘an absolute must’ for the ÖVP—the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, the Finance, the Economy, and Agriculture. ‘The ÖVP can’t do without all of these.’ The Ministry of Defence was added later.

EU agendas only with the Chancellor if he is from the ÖVP?

The ÖVP also demanded that a FPÖ Chancellor would have to relinquish EU competences—the responsibility that was transferred to the Chancellery under Sebastian Kurz. ‘In other words: what was moved to the Chancellery under an ÖVP chancellor should return to the ÖVP Foreign Ministry without an ÖVP chancellor.’ [sayeth Mr. Kickl]

Kickl was irritated by this: ‘At first I thought they can’t be serious, because there was always talk of negotiations on an equal footing and acknowledgement of election results.’ However, when asked why this had to be the case, Stocker simply replied: ‘It has always been like this. In the negotiations, the ÖVP got that from the SPÖ—and the SPÖ got the chancellor in return.’

This puts a huge question mark over the history of the Second Austrian Republic of the past 50 years, to be honest: who was the driving force? It would seem that a well-connected ÖVP-fronted cabal was doing all of this while the Socialists-turned-Social Democrats (in the early 1990s) did little more than PR in their role as useful (useless) idiots.

Yet, that eXXpress piece says way more:

The ÖVP had to move, he had told ÖVP leader Stocker in no uncertain terms, said Kickl. The FPÖ then proposed a compromise to the People’s Party: two essential ministries—Finance and Home Affairs—for the FPÖ, while the ÖVP would keep the remaining three core ministries. However, the People’s Party insisted on its maximum demand: all five ministries plus the Ministry of Defence.

Moreover, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen had emphasised that the FPÖ should not be given the security portfolio, Kickl said. ‘That really surprised me.’ In all his personal conversations with the Federal President, this had never come up. ‘If he had done so, I would have told him immediately that I was returning his mandate to form the government.’ From the outset, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of the Interior were the two central ministries that Kickl did not want to give up because of the election programme [and because the ÖVP, which ran both in the past 10+ years was in effect largely responsible for the migration crisis and the budget debacle].

Kickl then drew a comparison with the previous government: ‘What does that actually mean now? The People's Party wanted to keep the same ministries for itself that it got with the Greens in 2019—only then as the election winner.’ [the ÖVP stood at 37% of the vote vs. around 8-9% for the Greens] The FPÖ, on the other hand, should be content with the position of chancellor—‘without EU competences.’ The FPÖ would also have relinquished the Ministry of Justice, which would have remained with the Greens, as ‘a neutral person makes sense here.’

And this is where Mr. Kickl—made a bunch of concessions to his interlocutors:

Herbert Kickl addressed the journalists present directly: ‘Don’t you see a certain imbalance here?’ And continued: ‘Who actually has a problem with power here?’

The FPÖ had finally made the ÖVP a new offer—with a preponderance of ministries for the People’s Party: seven ministries for the ÖVP, only six for the FPÖ. ‘We just couldn’t do without Finance and Interior because they are the key to debt reduction and a clear course on security issues.’

The FPÖ also made concessions to the ÖVP in the Ministry of the Interior. As the secret services are a sensitive and security-relevant issue, the Freedom Party had proposed ‘placing this area in the hands of an independent state secretary’. The FPÖ had presented the Federal President with ‘a whole list of strong, competent and well-known personalities—solely out of national political responsibility, free from political influence.’ However, this renunciation of political influence must ‘also apply to the People’s Party’ [which, as must have become clear to everyone by now, is anathema to the People’s Party; I’m not fan of the FPÖ, but what has transpired is quite…something].

The FPÖ was also willing to compromise when it came to the Ministry of Finance. It had proposed those experts who had already worked closely with the ÖVP to prevent the EU deficit procedure [keep this in mind, it’ll become relevant below]—people who harmonised perfectly with the People’s Party.

However, the ÖVP had deliberated for days—with no result. ‘No movement on the part of the ÖVP.’

This is where I’ll stop citing that eXXpress piece.

One of the issues that is notably absent from their otherwise quite acceptable reporting, however, is the notion that Mr. Kickl was told from the get-go of negotiations to not bring up anything related to Covid.

So, what’s going to happen now?

Many Problems, and No Solution is in Sight

As summarised by state broadcaster ORF on 13 Feb. 2025, every parliamentary party chair had already trekked to the federal president to ‘report™’ on whatever, I suppose:

On Platform X, [federal president] Van der Bellen expressed his thanks for the talks ‘in a constructive and trusting atmosphere’. A ‘close dialogue’ was agreed over the coming days. The decision on how to proceed is therefore still a long way off. However, everyone ‘realises that action must now be taken quickly and responsibly’, wrote Van der Bellen.

According to ORF, there will be no statements from the Hofburg in the coming days. The parties are now called upon to find majorities in favour of one of the possible options, until then confidentiality should prevail…

Despite the fact that the negotiation process between the FPÖ and ÖVP has now come to an end, there is no cause for concern, as Van der Bellen noted with reference to the constitution: ‘We have a government and we will have one.’ [yes, a caretaker gov’t led by perhaps the most vile character in recent decades, Alexander Schallenberg—yes, he of the ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’ and the mandatory vaccination obligation']

Kickl in Favour of a Snap Election

Of the party leaders, only Kickl has spoken out in favour of the option of new elections. He told a press conference on Wednesday evening that he had recommended to the head of state that a new election be called quickly. He was convinced that clear conditions were needed as quickly as possible instead of a stalemate or a ‘business as usual’ situation.

I’m with Mr. Kickl on this one—the other four parliamentary parties had 3+ months to hammer out something, and they failed to do so in January. It’s February now, and nothing fundamentally has changed.

This transpires before a rather acute financial crisis will happen, as the Head of the Austrian Fiscal Advisory Commission (Fiskalrat) Christoph Badelt warned on Wednesday:

Until a new budget is adopted, there is an automatic provisional arrangement whereby the ‘old’ budget is simply carried forward each month.

However, the state may not take on more than half of the debt that was allowed to be incurred in the previous year…

‘In practice, this means that the state will probably not be able to take on any debt in April/May or June at the latest,’ said Badelt. ‘That could of course cause liquidity problems.’ A transitional budget is therefore needed until then—by whatever majority.

So, imagine the following: renewed negotiations between all parties but the FPÖ will stall before too long; it’s long known that these ‘talks™’ are merely about the distribution of cabinet-level and other positions and never about substantive issues (which are mainly decided upon in Brussels anyways).

The rainbow-coloured anti-right™ Uniparty will fumble that one, too, accompanied by a further increase of the FPÖ’s support in the polls.

Everybody but the FPÖ leadership will quickly shift into panic mode and while they may or may not agree on continued support for the current caretaker gov’t out of sheer desperation to keep the FPÖ out, I don’t think that major problems with the EU and/or financial markets can be avoided at this point.

Add to that the possibility of snap elections before summer, and you can be assured major troubles, esp. as these renewed negotiations™ are taking place as Germany heads to the polls. You may ask yourself now: what else can go wrong?

Bottom Lines: What do the People think?

Finally, consideration shall be given to ordinary Austrians who often appear as a mere after-thought in these matters, if at-all.

Tabloid daily Heute sent a reporter to one of Vienna’s working class/immigrant quarters, Favoriten, and asked about these developments:

‘You can't vote for anyone in Austria anymore. Apparently nothing helps here anymore, it’s getting worse and worse,’ a passer-by says angrily as she walks past.

Josef wants new elections. ‘That would be best’. Manuel (name changed) agrees: ‘Then everyone should vote for the FPÖ. What could be better?’, he says into the Heute microphone.

Christa, on the other hand, would like the Austro-Ampel [the Uniparty gov’t] to materialise after all: ‘I hope that the three (ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS) will come together again’.

‘It's terrible! They should work for Austria and not just for themselves,’ another passer-by says angrily as he walks past us.

One thing is clear, the population is slowly running out of patience. What happens next will probably only be decided in the next few days.

Speaking of what happened literally right thereafter, the ÖVP’s politicos™ were spotted in the hallways of the SPÖ party HQ, with Heute adding (14 Feb. 2025) that ÖVP leader Stocker looked ‘relieved’ that the—mainly fake, I’d think—talks with the FPÖ ended:

‘We only go to parties to which we are invited,’ says a ÖVP strategist to Heute. The fact is, however, that Christian Stocker is on his way to becoming Federal Chancellor as a complete surprise and securing key portfolios (interior, finance) for the People’s Party after all. ‘It’s the Federal President's turn, the People’s Party is always ready to take on responsibility,’ says Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer.

Translation: we’re ready to plunder the coffers a bit longer.

Yet, as enraging as I find this, it will end before too long.

If that end will also include major troubles for the EU, NATO, and the rest of Europe or not, I don’t know (but it’s getting more likely by the day).

I do know one thing, though: what can’t continue, won’t.

And the current régime, basically a Cold War holdover, doesn’t have a whole lot of mileage left.