At the beginning of her party’s European election meeting, AfD leader Alice Weidel called for cooperation with like-minded people in the European Parliament as a measure against irregular migration. “We need Fortress Europe to protect our homeland, and we’re doing that together with our European partners,” said the co-party leader in front of around 600 delegates in Magdeburg, where this Saturday the election of the AfD top candidate for the European elections is at stake .
At a federal party conference the day before, in a debate on the AfD delegation’s accession to the European party “Identity and Democracy”, Weidel helped ensure that an application by supporters of Germany’s exit from the European Union was rejected. On Saturday she said that the EU was deeply undemocratic and encroaching, and that it was interfering with private life and business structuring.
Höcke wants a new European confederation
On the fringes of the meeting, the Thuringian AfD chairman Björn Höcke called for the abolition of the European Union in its current form. “There are many reasons to reject the EU, it doesn’t bring Europe any further,” said the politician, who was described as a right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in the phoenix interview. “This EU must die so that the real Europe can live.” Höcke advocated a new European confederation of states.
A proposal by the party executive, contrary to the original plan, to first nominate the candidates for the European elections and only then decide on the election program was accepted with a large majority. The concerns of one delegate who criticized that the program and the candidates had to fit together met with little response. It is expected that the election of the candidates will take place over several days. The meeting will be suspended on Sunday and then resumed next Friday.
From party circles it was said that there could be up to 150 applications for the list places. Federal board member Mariana Harder-Kühnel said the aim was to choose at least 30 candidates.
At the federal party conference on Friday, the representatives of the state associations repeatedly held discussions in small groups to position their candidates.
Krah strives for the top
The Saxon MEP Maximilian Krah is aiming for the top of the AfD list for the European elections. The 46-year-old is running for first place. “We are now the most exciting right-wing party in all of Europe,” said Krah.
The largely unknown Andreas Otti from Berlin competes against Krah. The leader of the AfD parliamentary group in Spandau town hall said about the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine: “The brother nations are bleeding dry. That’s not in my interest and it’s also not in the interest of Europe.” He promised, in the event that he should be elected candidate, to cede 3,000 euros per month to the AfD.
A delegate was surprised by Otti’s candidacy and asked him: “Don’t you think that the AfD’s top candidate needs a minimum of awareness?”
Krah’s candidacy is not without controversy in the party, and there has been a lot of trouble in the EU Parliament because of him. The right-wing parliamentary group Identity and Democracy (ID) had suspended him for three months at the beginning of the year. It was about the allegation that Krah should have manipulated the award of a PR contract for the parliamentary group.
His membership in the group had already been suspended for several months in 2022. At the time, he was accused of not supporting Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National party in the French presidential campaign, but publicly supporting the party of right-wing extremist Éric Zemmour.
He accused his opponents within the party of waging an anonymous smear campaign against him for months. The lawyer has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019. Until 2016 he was a member of the CDU.
