Austria ready to form new conservative-Green government

Austria will be able to ring in a new decade with a new government, after the conservative Austria’s People’s Party, led by Sebastian Kurz, and the Green Party agreed to a preliminary coalition deal on Saturday night.

The agreement comes three months after the country’s parliamentary elections, in which former Chancellor Kurz’s party came first, with 37 percent of the vote, and the Greens returned to parliament on the back of growing concern over climate change.

The preliminary deal still needs to be signed off by the Greens’ Federal Congress, which has been summoned to meet on January 4.

Austria has been governed by a technocratic interim government — under the leadership of senior judge Brigitte Bierlein — since late May, when Kurz lost a no-confidence vote in the wake of a corruption scandal that brought down the governing coalition between his People’s Party and the far-right Freedom Party.

Read more via Politico/Reuters