AUSTRIA’S new government took office today, with Christian Stocker appointed chancellor at the head of a previously untried three-party coalition after a five-month wait for a new administration.

The new government will have to deal with rising unemployment, a recession and a creaking budget. 

Its coalition agreement, reached on Thursday after the longest negotiations in post-World War II Austria, foresees strict new asylum rules in the country of nine million people.

This is the EU member state’s first three-party government, bringing together Mr Stocker’s right-wing Austrian People’s Party, the Social Democrats and the liberal Neos. 

The alliance came together only at the second attempt, after the far-right Freedom Party emerged as the strongest political force in a parliamentary election on September 29.

A first attempt collapsed in early January, prompting the resignation of then-chancellor Karl Nehammer, who had said that his party wouldn’t work under Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl.

Mr Stocker took over from Mr Nehammer as leader of the People’s Party and went into negotiations with Mr Kickl on a possible coalition, but those collapsed on February 12 amid mutual finger-pointing.

The three parties in the new coalition managed to find enough common ground to head off the possibility of an early election.