Thomas Oberreiter, the head of Austria’s permanent representation to the EU, has resigned from his post for “personal reasons” after local media tied him to a sexually explicit blog that allegedly published misogynistic content, Der Standard revealed on Wednesday, July 29th.
Oberreiter denies having any connection to the blog and maintains that he is leaving his Brussels post to save the international reputation of Austria from further embarrassment. The Austrian government was quick to side with him against the ensuing media frenzy.
“After Federal Minister Meinl-Reisinger learned of the allegations on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry immediately reviewed the case,” a government spokesman said, but quickly added that Oberreiter’s resignation “should not be considered as confirmation of the allegations.”
“For reasons of data and privacy protection of the person concerned and their relatives, we cannot provide further details,” the government spokesman added.
According to Austrian media, the since-deleted explicit blog regularly used misogynistic language, some of which was “not only sexist, but grossly derogatory”—often referring to women as “meat”—as well as highly explicit BDSM content, including sexual fantasies written from the perspective of women.
Although Oberreiter’s authorship has not been forensically established yet, the blog has been traced back to the servers of the foreign ministry, while timestamps prove that many of the entries were published during normal working hours.
Der Standard also reported that rumors of a top official running the blog have been circulating in the foreign service for a long time, with people speculating whether the sexual encounters published on it happened with real people or even colleagues.
Oberreiter, a career diplomat without formal party association, has worked in the Austrian foreign service for over three decades. He held several key positions, such as the head of the cabinets of Chancellor Brigitte Bierlein and Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, a member of the center-right Austrian Freedom Party (ÖVP), which Oberreiter is most connected to.
The episode, therefore, gives political leverage to the opposition parties, where several MPs have begun demanding full disclosure to make sure no one else is compromised from a security point of view, exposing them to potential foreign blackmail.
