Emotional negotiations continued late into the night on Friday, now everything is fixed: in the morning, governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner and Lower Austria’s FPÖ leader Udo Landbauer will inform the party executives about the results of the negotiations, and at noon the new government duo will be in front of the media report on the details of the labor agreement – exxpressTV and exxpress.at will be broadcast live.
“In the struggle for solutions, we agreed on measures that will advance Lower Austria,” emphasized Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner on Friday night. “Negotiations with the ÖVP have ended. We have agreed on an ambitious work program in terms of real change and our compatriots,” wrote FPÖ leader Udo Landbauer.
The negotiations began anything but without conflict: The FPÖ forced the head of the ÖVP Lower Austria to speak clearly about vaccination errors and the time of the pandemic. Shortly before the Freedom Party with their tough demands – a resignation of Mikl-Leitner was also in the room – would have spanned the bow and the ÖVP would have ended the negotiations at the latest today, Friday, the Blues returned to a constructive basis for talks (the eXXpress reported) .
In the extremely heated mood between the FPÖ negotiators and the Lower Austrian ÖVP leadership this week, there were even threats of a new election.
A group of artists – including many so-called “state artists” – spoke out in a letter of protest against a black-blue labor agreement in Lower Austria. Many of those who signed the letter close to the SPÖ may have forgotten that it was the SPÖ that ended Sebastian Kurz’s government in May 2019 in a joint vote with the FPÖ and Herbert Kickl in parliament.