Teams and Content – Kickl and Stocker meet for exploratory purposes

On Thursday, the appointment calendar of many ÖVP grandees will be based on ex-boss and chancellor Karl Nehammer for the last time. The resigned invited people to an unofficial farewell party in the chancellery.

Nehammer’s successor Christian Stocker will probably join later. Together with Chamber of Commerce chairman Harald Mahrer and club boss August Wöginger, he meets his three blue counterparts Herbert Kickl, Norbert Nemeth and Reinhard Teufel for the first time. The two teams of three should also form the core teams of blue and black in case of any government negotiations. In any case, negotiations, it was emphasized, have not yet been completed.

Budget as the first bottleneck
The ‘in-depth exploratory conversations’ should provide clarity about what the further blue-black roadmap looks like and how the red-white-red state budget can be consolidated. It had already been agreed in advance to discuss budget consolidation on Friday. The other negotiating teams are also taking increasingly concrete forms.

On the FPÖ side, in addition to Kickl, Nemeth and Teufel, there are Susanne Fürst, the Secretaries General Christian Hafenecker and Michael Schnedlitz, budget spokesman Hubert Fuchs and ÖBB CFO Arnold Schiefer. In addition to the three-person core team, Claudia Plakolm and the new general secretary Alexander Pröll will also play a leading role in the negotiations at the ÖVP.