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ST. PÖLTEN, Austria (LifeSiteNews) — The coalition government of an Austrian state will establish a 30-million-euro fund to pay victims of draconian COVID measures, including those injured by the vaccines.

The agreement between the two parties in the state of Lower Austria’s coalition, the nominally conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), says that this fund will be used to pay for “counseling services in the event of individual damage, medical care for people with vaccination impairments, costs for the treatment of psychological problems, any necessary therapies.” 

The state government also announced compensation payments specifically for children and adolescents who suffered due to the school closure: “[A]dditional expenses for homeschooling, other necessary support primarily for children and adolescents such as, for example, vouchers for tutoring, leisure activities, etc., will be funded.” 

Moreover, the government will refund all fines “paid due to violations of Corona restrictions” that were “subsequently repealed by the Constitutional Court.” 

The coalition agreement also states that the COVID injections will not be advertized anymore and that “[w]here the province of Lower Austria exercises personnel sovereignty [i.e. has authority over staff decisions], no measures are taken that amount to a direct or indirect Corona vaccine mandate.” 

The new government’s commitment to compensating the victims of COVID related measures was a surprise to many, as the ruling party ÖVP and its governor of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, were among the most fervent supporters of the highly controversial general vaccine mandate that the Austrian government announced in late 2021. 

READ: Austrian parliament votes to impose mandatory vaccines on all adults 

The ÖVP went from winning around 49% of the votes in the previous election to snagging only about 39 percent in Lower Austria’s February election. Meanwhile, the FPÖ made the biggest gains of any party and become the second-strongest political power in the state for the first time in history. To stay in power, the ÖVP had little choice but to form a coalition with the anti-immigration, anti-COVID-measures FPÖ. 

The compensation of people who suffered under the draconian COVID regime is therefore a concession to the FPÖ, the only political party that voted unanimously against the vaccine mandate. 

A few days before the new government coalition program was announced, Governor Mikl-Leitner admitted publicly that the vaccine mandate was “a mistake.” This admission was likely also due to a FPÖ demand.

Austrian Catholic activist Alexander Tschugguel told LifeSiteNews that the state “had an election in which the party that advocated for forced vaccination and also for other modern, messed-up measures, the ÖVP, has been punished.” 

READ: WATCH: Alexander Tschugguel raises alarm on COVID tyranny in Austria 

“The FPÖ has used all its leverage, knowing that the voters want a right-wing conservative government and not so-called ‘center-left’ politics, and said that ‘if we make a coalition then only under the following rules:’ no more ‘gender-neutral’ language, the native language of Austrians, German, should be spoken in the schoolyards, and most importantly all the unjust penalties that people had to pay — we are talking about mothers who were punished because their children played with other children — that these people are compensated,” the Catholic activist continued. 

“This step is so important because it makes Lower Austria a pioneer of a policy that does not say: ‘Yes, okay, mistakes were made on both sides,’ but rather states very clearly: ‘No, mistakes were made here unilaterally; this vaccine mandate was wrong. The rules were disproportionate or even completely wrong, and we must not only apologize but also compensate people for the damage we have done.’” 

“There is still a lot of room for improvement, but the first steps have been taken, and I hope this is an example for the rest of Austria,” Tschugguel concluded. 

However, the FPÖ was criticized  for breaking one promise to the voters: candidate Udo Landbauer said before and after the election that he would not form a coalition with Mikl-Leitner as governor. 

Stefan Magnet, a political commentator and editor of one of the largest alternative TV stations in the country, said that the coalition program is a “great success, but no victory yet.” 

While Magnet was happy about the concessions that the FPÖ was able to achieve, he also warned of the dangers of such a deal. It could be said that the FPÖ betrayed its voters by ensuring Mikl-Leitner was returned as governor and that the politicians responsible for the COVID dictatorship “want to pull their heads out of the noose by paying compensations.” 

He stressed that the resistance movement sees compensation as a first step and that “criminal prosecution” of the people responsible is necessary. 

In November 2021, Austria became the first Western country to make the COVID injections mandatory for all its citizens and also briefly segregated “the unvaccinated” from society by imposing a lockdown only on those who had not received the COVID shots. The vaccine mandate, which was originally intended to take effect in February 2022, was finally abolished in June 2022 after it had been suspended for months.

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