Iceland moved closer to the anti-establishment Pirate party gaining a place in government after the Independence party failed to pull together a governing coalition following recent elections.
President Gudni Johannesson earlier this month gave a mandate to Bjarni Benediktsson, the leader of Independence, which won the most seats in the 29 October election.
Benediktsson said on Tuesday that efforts had failed and he was putting the ball back in the president’s court.
“I do not have parties to form a majority government with so the situation is up in the air,” Benediktsson said after meeting with the president.
“The next steps are in the hands of the president and we just have to see what happens.”
The president is expected to ask the Left Greens’ Katrin Jakobsdottir to try to form a coalition. She said she had been called by the president to a meeting on Wednesday.
She would then likely try to form a centre-left government consisting of the Pirates, the Social Democratic Alliance, Bright Future and the Reform party.
The newly formed Reform and Bright Future were the parties Independence had hoped to govern with.
Independence was coalition partner with the Progressive party in Iceland’s previous government, but the Progressives’ vote collapsed in the election after the Panama Papers scandal.
Stumbling blocks in the post-election coalition talks between Independence, Reform and Bright Future had been fisheries quota policies and the issue of EU membership, with the Independence party being eurosceptics.
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