Vienna - In the new Austrian cabinet lineup presented on Monday, social issues are firmly in the hands of the Social Democratic Party, while law and order portfolios have shifted to the conservative People's Party. As expected, social democratic leader Werner Faymann, 48, will lead the government as chancellor, while his conservative counterpart Josef Proell, 40, will become vice chancellor and finance minister.
The 18-strong cabinet is expected to be sworn in next week by President Heinz Fischer.
Compared with the last coalition between the two parties, which broke apart in July, the labour and health agendas shifted back to the social democrats.
In an effort to appease trade unions which felt alienated by the previous cabinet, Faymann gave the post of labour and social minister to Rudolf Hundstorfer, 57, currently the head of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions.
Together with Proell and the new conservative economic minister Reinhold Mitterlehner, 52, Hundstorfer will have to execute an economic stimulus package worth 5 billion euros (6.4 billion dollars) for Austria's 8 million inhabitants, which includes a tax reform, infrastructure projects and family subsidies.
In return for giving up social-related portfolios, the conservatives, who chose a law-and-order theme in their campaign for the September elections, now control not only the interior ministry, but also the justice ministry.
Michael Spindelegger, 49, is set to become foreign minister in Austria's new coalition cabinet, after incumbent Ursula Plassnik stepped down Sunday over a dispute on European Union referenda.
Despite having served as chairman of the EU committee in parliament for the last two years and as a member of the European Parliament in 1995 and 1996, he does not have much of a foreign policy profile in public.
Plassnik, 52, stepped down after four years in office, after her Conservative Party did not insist on explicitly ruling out referenda on future EU treaties in the coalition agreement.
The previous coalition broke apart over this issue, when the Conservative Party called it quits over the Social Democratic Party's announcement that changes of the EU treaty should be decided by popular vote.
Although the two parties lost heavily in the elections, they won the most votes - 29 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively.
Austria's two far-right parties, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria, won a total of around 28 per cent of the votes, but they stood little chance of being asked to join a government.
As the economic crisis hit the country's stock market, banks, and once-solid companies such as Austrian Airlines, social democrats and conservatives deemed their coalition to be the only reliable option, despite the fact that the previous cabinet spent much of the past 18 months bickering.
But the big economic challenges would bring the two coalition partners closer together, political scientist Peter Filzmaier said.
"Such a crisis welds them together," said Filzmaier, who teaches at Danube University Krems.
