Talks underway

Will red-black start this week? “The mood is good!”

Christian Stocker and Andreas Babler can build on the 300-page paper from the "Zuckerl" negotiations.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / picturedesk.com)

Austria is looking at 140 days without a new government - will everything finally happen quickly? The ÖVP and SPÖ want to give it one more try, the Federal President and the voters are to be informed by the middle of the week. The "Krone" knows the current state of affairs.

At the moment, nobody wants to talk about new coalition negotiations, but about talks. Only the chief negotiators have been sounding out since the weekend whether the sticking points that caused the coalition negotiations to fail can now be overcome.

"The mood is good, but we can't announce a breakthrough yet," we hear. The ÖVP and SPÖ only want to make representations to Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and inform the public when a concrete result is available. The time could come in the middle of this week.

One thing is already certain: if the ÖVP and SPÖ are able to agree on a new edition of the coalition negotiations, there will be no more talks in subgroups. After all, there is a 300-page protocol of the negotiations. To ensure that compromises are also possible this time, the SPÖ has a kind of "supervised negotiation" - the pragmatic trade unionist Josef Muchitsch and the Third President of the National Council Doris Bures are keeping a close eye on Babler.

On the ÖVP side, party leader Christian Stocker, club chairman August Wöginger, Secretary General Alexander Pröll and Upper Austrian Governor Thomas Stelzer are negotiating. The distribution of ministries will also be exciting for the ÖVP and SPÖ - in particular: who will get the Ministry of Finance?