🇦🇹 The far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has announced that its negotiations to form the first far-right led government in the country since World War 2 have collapsed.
They have returned the mandate to the president, which means either another round of talks to form a grand coalition, or new elections.
Per Reuters, some of the issues included proposals by the FPÖ to interpret international courts' rulings as restrictively as possible, asking for Austrian exceptions to EU sanctions against Russia, and paying damages to those "harmed" by legislation on COVID-19.
The FPÖ had been driving such a hard bargain since polling showed them making huge gains compared to the September 2024 election where they achieved 28.8%.
One poll near the start of discussions put them as high at 39%, while their potential coalition partners, the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), were losing voters to the FPÖ.
However, the FPÖ’s numbers had begun to taper off, leading to the negotiations collapsing.