FRANKFURT, June 13 — Germany’s AfD will seek new partners in the European Parliament after being banned from the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, a senior member of the far-right party said today.
“We will continue to explore the options for alternative alliances,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel told AFP in Berlin, adding that she was “quite confident” about the way forward.
The AfD was expelled from the ID group in the parliament, in which France’s National Rally (RN) and Italy’s League had been its partners, due to scandals linked to its top candidate for the recent EU polls, Maximilian Krah.
The move was triggered by comments by Krah minimising the crimes of the Nazis’ notorious SS, while he was also earlier accused of having suspicious links to Russia and China.
After scoring record results in the EU elections, the AfD moved to expel Krah from its delegation to the parliament in an apparent attempt at mending ties with the group.
But news outlet Politico reported that ID group politicians, including RN leader Marine Le Pen, decided at a Brussels meeting they still do not want to re-admit the AfD for now.
Weidel said her party had not yet received an “official statement” from Marine Le Pen’s RN, adding that she wanted to wait to make some phone calls “with friends in Brussels” before making any further decisions on the issue.
The AfD came second place in Germany in the EU vote, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats and behind only the conservative CDU-CSU bloc.
Created in 2013 as an anti-euro group before morphing into an anti-immigration party, the AfD has enjoyed a resurgence as Germany struggles with a surge in migration and a stumbling economy. — AFP
