Herbert Kickl, leader of Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), has won a court case against the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ), which now has to pay him €1,500 damages and €6,900 in procedural costs.
The SPÖ had stated in a newsletter that Kickl had “close contacts” with a well known neo-Nazi.
In addition, it was spread that the then interior minister had ordered a raid at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (then BVT) to confiscate a list in the right-wing extremism department that was supposed to prove closeness between the two.
On January 29, the Vienna Commercial Court ordered the SPÖ to dismiss these accusations with a counter-statement.
“There can be no doubt – especially taking into account the plaintiff’s ministerial office at the time and his current function as federal party chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria – that the incriminated statements are likely to impair or diminish the reputation or value of the plaintiff in society,” the court said in a judgment, seen by the national Austrian news agency APA.
The defendant’s statements constituted “an untrue defamatory insult to my reputation”, it added.
On January 30, the SPÖ published a public retraction, which it also shared on social media.
In that, it also added a link inviting readers to sign up to become a member of the party.
Was von den Blablas zu halten ist. #PATRIOTS pic.twitter.com/M1eTsWwjcz
— Harald Vilimsky (@vilimsky) January 30, 2025
