Austria's EU ambassador resigns over claims he ran sexist blog
The controversy erupted this week after Austrian media reported that a senior diplomat had been dismissed for allegedly being behind The Night Mare, which has since been deleted.
On Monday, Thomas Oberreiter, Austria's representative in Brussels since 2023, requested his dismissal 'for personal reasons' after being linked to the claims.
Featuring a number of degrading posts, some of the blog entries were erotic fantasies and others contained graphic descriptions of sexual assault written from the perspective of a fictional female author named Caro.
At one point, the narrator allegedly referred to women as 'meat, nothing more'. Elsewhere, women were labelled as whores and acts of violence were said to be associated with 'total submission', according to Fass ohne Boden, an investigative platform that first published the allegations.
Notably, blog entries were linked to IP addresses associated with the foreign ministry, according to the newspaper Der Standard, which reviewed copies of some blog entries. Timestamps suggested that the content may have been written during working hours.
The Austrian foreign office told The Times that Beate Meinl-Reisinger, the Austrian foreign minister, had opened an investigation as soon as she learnt, on Saturday, about the allegations.
A statement said that Oberreiter's resignation should not be interpreted as confirmation of the allegations and that further details could not be shared 'for reasons of data and privacy protection of the person concerned and also of his relatives'.
Der Standard reported that Oberreiter had denied the allegations but resigned to avert damage from the Austrian mission in Brussels.
A seasoned diplomat, Oberreiter, 59, held one of Austria's most influential foreign policy roles. As permanent representative to the EU, he was in charge of preparing meetings with leaders of EU nations, negotiating communiqués and co-ordinating Austrian positions within Brussels — a post considered more strategically significant than many other ambassadorial assignments.
Oberreiter's long career included other prominent roles in ministerial cabinets, including serving as chief of staff to Alexander Schallenberg, a former foreign minister and interim chancellor who belongs to the ruling Austrian People's Party.
The affair has taken on a political dimension, not least because the platform Fass ohne Boden is operated by Alexander Surowiec, a former communications adviser to the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO). The FPO has announced plans to file a parliamentary inquiry into the case.
So far, there have been no criminal charges. The foreign ministry confirmed that Oberreiter would return to the ministry's headquarters in Vienna but declined to elaborate whether disciplinary proceedings would follow, according to Austrian media.
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