Hergovich welcomes SPÖ leadership transition after crisis meeting

Lower Austria SPÖ leader Sven Hergovich welcomed a planned leadership transition in the party, calling it an important signal for its future. He spoke to ORF’s Lower Austria news service after a crisis meeting on Sunday.

Andreas Babler will remain vice-chancellor and SPÖ leader until the end of the year, after which Finance Minister Markus Marterbauer will take over the government post. Parliamentary leader Philip Kucher and women’s leader Eva-Maria Holzleitner are to lead the party for at least a period.

The decisions followed a meeting in Vienna between the federal SPÖ and the party’s state organisations. Babler said his gradual withdrawal was intended to help restore unity, adding that internal debates had harmed the party and needed to end.

Hergovich said the nine state branches, the women’s organisation and the FSG, the Social Democratic trade unionists’ faction, had worked together. He called this an important signal for the SPÖ’s future, adding that the party had found “a good path” and that the changes were necessary.

Hergovich said he was confident Marterbauer, Holzleitner and Kucher would lead the party into calmer times. He said divisions had been bridged and that a more united future would be good for both the SPÖ and the country.