South Tyrol: Coalition negotiators reached agreement on issues

This was said by SVP State Secretary Martin Pircher. In the coming days there will still have to be discussions about the size of the state government, the responsibilities and the distribution of departments.

Only then will the coalition negotiations be finally concluded, emphasized Pircher after a marathon negotiation session at the so-called “coalition table,” at which the leaders of the future coalition members came together. The individual parties would then go to the committees that still have to approve the pact. At the SVP, for example, this would be the party committee next Monday.

Weeks of negotiations

The negotiations lasted around a month and had recently become somewhat drawn out. The original plan was to have it finished before Christmas, but there were apparently still some serious negotiation blocks that needed to be cleared away.

In any case, the state parliament must be convened on time. The election of Governor Arno Kompatscher (SVP) in the state parliament is scheduled for January 16th.

The desired alliance had recently faced some headwinds from civil society for the “collective party”. 224 scientists from the autonomous province took to the barricades with an “open letter” against the coalition with the right-wing parties. Around 200 artists also spoke out against Fratelli d’Italia, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, participating in government. However, the majority of the SVP party base seemed to support the course of Kompatscher and chairman Philipp Achammer.

“Clear alignment of the center”

Kompatscher tried to take the wind out of the critics’ sails or calm them down. Among other things, he emphasized that it was up to the SVP to “guarantee that a coalition has a clear center orientation.” After all, they are the party that “represents the middle and whose policies are clearly middle.”

Part of the coalition agreement should also be a preamble in which the partners commit to values ​​such as Europe, autonomy, sustainability and non-discrimination. The preamble and the question of autonomy – South Tyrol wants to regain lost competencies from Rome – are said to have been, among other things, sticking points that still needed to be resolved in the final negotiations, of which little or nothing was made known to the outside world. It was also heard that the Freedom Party, who were not exactly united within the party, pushed vehemently for their core demands, especially in the areas of migration and security.

A novelty in South Tyrolean history

At the beginning of December, the majority of the SVP committees spoke out in favor of the center-right variant and against a left-of-center variant. If the negotiations come to a positive conclusion, the new alliance will have 19 of 35 seats in the South Tyrolean state parliament and will therefore have a clear majority. It was clear from the start: after its defeat in the state elections at the end of October, the “collective party” needed two more coalition partners in order to achieve a state parliament majority or at least a German-speaking partner. A novelty in South Tyrolean history. In the end, only the Lega governed. In any case, it is mandatory that an Italian-speaking party or its proponents be represented in a state government.

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