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“No games, no tricks, no sabotage.” Herbert Kickl seems to have started a ransom negotiation instead of the coalition talks last week after receiving the go-ahead from Austria’s president to try to establish a government three months after winning the parliamentary elections.

The far-right leader will undoubtedly have the whip hand in negotiations with the center-right People’s party (ÖVP), whose own coalition efforts collapsed earlier this month. Any disruption, Kickl threatened, would lead to a new vote and, polls suggest, a landslide victory for his Freedom party (FPÖ) against the conservatives.

Kickl couldn’t have it his own way. The ÖVP insisted on its acceptance of safeguards to protect the freedom of the press, maintain a good relationship with the EU and continue support for Ukraine. But the center-right doesn’t show much backbone. Christian Stocker, the new leader of the ÖVP, last autumn described Kickl’s FPÖ as “not only a threat to democracy, but also a great threat to the security of Austria”. A few months later, there was no such convincing.

Austria is on course for its first far-right chancellor since the second world war. It’s a logical progression for the country, where Kickl’s party has already been part of three center-right federal governments, though never in the lead. But it could still be a historic development for the FPÖ, with reverberations far beyond Austria.

It normalizes and inspires others populists nationalist movements in Europe. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) often takes its ideological cue from its more established Austrian counterpart. Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor, recently embraced the concept of “migration” — the mass deportation of immigrants deemed to have failed to integrate, never mind their citizenship. The idea was first championed by the Austrian nativist ideologue Martin Sellner, taken up by Kickl and his party and then adopted by the extremist wing of the AfD. When it emerged that a group of AfD politicians and activists had attended a meeting with Sellner in November 2023 to discuss “immigration”, Weidel actually dismissed them. Now he made the policy.

Kickl will strengthen the growing squad of nationalist, Eurosceptic leaders in central Europe who, orchestrated by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, seem determined to challenge the liberal establishment of the EU and its pro-Ukraine foreign policy. They could be joined by Andrej Babiš, the billionaire on the way to winning parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic later this year. Nationalist Călin Georgescu could be elected president of Romania in a rerun after his bid was canceled in December by the country’s constitutional court due to what Romanian authorities said was a Russian-backed influence campaign. Troubles in Mitteleuropa may not always work together but they have become impossible to sideline, let alone ignore.

by Kickl The likely rise to power also highlights the weakening of the European political center at the start of 2025. Mainstream parties that refuse to cooperate with the far right or populist right struggle to find common ground among themselves to effectively manageable. Tight public finances only exacerbate the problem.

In Austria, Kickl was invited to form a government because the center-right could not agree with the center-left and the liberals on how to reduce the yawning public deficit. In France, the new minority government of François Bayrou is hanging by a thread, waiting for a deal on the budget. Fundamental differences in debt rules first paralyzed and then blew up Germany’s “traffic light” coalition, pushing the AfD to new heights.

The mainstream German parties’ firewall against far-right power-sharing remains intact – for now. But their ability to work together will be sorely tested. The Christian Democrats, who have shifted sharply to the right under Friedrich Merz, are set to win, but will have to team up with the Social Democrats or the Greens, and possibly both, to form a coalition. But some of Merz’s allies are determined to mock the Greens.

“Austria is an example of how things should not be done,” said Greens chancellor candidate Robert Habeck. “If the centrist parties are unable to form alliances and reject compromises as the work of the devil, that will help the radicals.”

“If we don’t show the willingness to build democratic alliances, we face instability and the inability to act. Germany can’t afford it and we can’t expect Europe to accept it.”

Habeck is right. Compromise has become a dirty word in European politics. One that would certainly never pass Herbert Kickl’s lips.

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