Anti-immigrant Freedom Party chief Herbert Kickl is currently in pole position to get the job permanently.
Alexander Schallenberg from the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) will take over as chancellor on Friday following the resignation of Karl Nehammer over the breakdown of coalition talks among Vienna’s mainstream parties.
New negotiations, led by the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), are set to kick off in the coming days.
President Alexander Van der Bellen will “entrust” Schallenberg with the top job in the meantime, the president’s office told news agency APA.
Schallenberg is Austria’s foreign minister and is set to lead the country in a dual role until the next government takes office.
Mainstream parties initially gave the FPÖ, which won the most seats in last September’s election, the cold shoulder. But after the talks between mainstream parties collapsed last week, Van der Bellen on Monday tasked far-right chief Herbert Kickl with forming a new government.
If Kickl — who is expected to cozy up to the Kremlin and pursue hard-line 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.
