Robert Habeck, Germany’s former Greens party vice chancellor, has agreed to pay €12,000 to end proceedings brought against him by political competitor, the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
In August 2024, during a Greens Party event ahead of the State elections in Saxony, Habeck had claimed that the pro-Russian BSW was being financed by Russia.
Habeck said: “No one in the federal government, I mean, we don’t do everything right and we argue a lot, but no one is corrupt. Unlike the AfD and BSW, who everyone knows … are paid by Moscow, by Putin.
“But getting paid for your opinion, buying votes on the internet, building up armies of trolls, having an opinion bought, that’s disgusting. And it’s not right. And we know that the AfD and BSW are paid in exactly the same way,” he added.
In November 2024, BSW and its leader Sahra Wagenknecht had filed suit against Habeck, claiming he had defamed the party and its leaders.
On December 12, the public prosecutor’s office of Dresden, the capital of Saxony, announced it had ended proceedings against Habeck in accordance with the Dresden regional court and the defendant himself.
As part of the plea deal Habeck will pay €12,000 to three Dresden-based NGOs and remain technically innocent of the charges brought against him.
The prosecutor’s office said: “In this case, it seemed appropriate to discontinue the investigation with the court’s approval, since, according to the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, in light of the fundamental right to freedom of expression, high standards must be applied in such cases when convicting someone for an offence involving expression.”
Jürgen Schmidt, spokesman for the Dresden prosecutor’s office, told Brussel Signal today that in such cases the consent of the complainant or injured party is not required and had therefore not been obtained.
He added that the money would go in equal parts to three local NGOs working in development aid, assistance for criminal offenders and support for children with cancer.
A video of the speech is still available online.
Brussels Signal contacted BSW for comment but had not heard back at the time of writing.
BSW is an offshoot of Die Linke, a left-wing party that is the successor organisation to the former Eastern German unity party SED.
Wagenknecht left Die Linke to start her own party. At the February 2025 general election, BSW narrowly missed entry into the German Bundestag, or parliament. It still has MPs in several Eastern German State parliaments, though.
Habeck has sued hundreds of ordinary Germans over online remarks in which they criticised the former vice chancellor.
In some cases, the defendants had their houses raided by German police who confiscated their phones and computers – most famously in the case of a pensioner with a handicapped daughter who had shared a meme that likened Habeck to a moron.
