Emmanuel Thomas I DPA, Saturday, July 29, 2023
BERLIN – Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will enter the 2024 European election campaign under the leadership of incumbent EU Parliament member Maximilian Krah.
The 46-year-old lawyer won the vote with 65.7% approval at his party’s European election meeting in the central city of Magdeburg, the party said on Saturday.
Delegates also elected a Bavarian member of the Bundestag or German parliament, Petr Bystron to second place on their candidate list for the European Parliament. He ran unopposed and received 82.4% of the vote.
“We are now the most exciting right-wing party in all of Europe,” Krah said in his candidacy speech. The elections are due to be held on June 9, 2024.
Running against Krah was the largely unknown Andreas Otti from Berlin, who received 25.2% of the vote.
Krah’s candidacy is controversial in the party due to his previous disruptive conduct in the European Parliament, where he has been a member since 2019.
On Saturday, Krah accused his opponents within the AfD of waging a months-long anonymous smear campaign against him.
Bystron said in his candidacy speech that the AfD was fighting against “globalists” and “warmongers.” He said the “old parties are in panic mode,” referring to Germany’s established political parties, some of which have lost ground recently.
The elections came during a party meeting in Magdeburg in which the AfD said it should cooperate with like-minded parties in the European Parliament to halt irregular migration, the party’s co-leader has said at a meeting to select candidates for European elections.
“We need Fortress Europe to protect our homeland, and we do that together with our European partners,” Alice Weidel told some 600 delegates on Saturday.
Weidel had helped ensure that a motion by supporters of Germany leaving the European Union was denied at a national party conference the previous day, during a debate on the AfD delegation joining the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament.
On Saturday, she said the EU was deeply undemocratic and encroaching, interfering in private life and business arrangements.
Party sources said there could be up to 150 applications for the list positions. Federal Executive Committee member Mariana Harder-Kühnel said the aim was to elect at least 30 candidates.
The debate on the programme with which the right-wing populists want to enter the European election campaign could possibly only be held at an additional meeting. According to a spokesmen, this would have to take place in January at the latest.
Most AfD officials advocate either a downsizing of the EU towards an economic union or Germany’s withdrawal from the European Union, analogous to the British exit, or Brexit, and therefore dubbed Dexit.
The meeting will take a break after Saturday’s proceedings and resume on Friday.
In nationwide voter polls, the right-wing populists recently scored approval ratings of between 18% and 22%. The AfD is polling even better in the states that make up the former East Germany.
Weidel took the opportunity on Saturday to slam the attitude of the opposition conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) towards her party.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz is getting lost in “anti-democratic firewall debates and bans on contact [with the AfD],” Weidel said.
In Germany, the centre-right party’s stance drawing a line against working with the far-right AfD is described as a firewall.
“We only have to tear down one firewall and that is the firewall of the CDU in the east, where we as AfD are already the strongest force,” she shouted to delegates.
Merz recently suggested that his party could work with the AfD at the local level, but not in federal government. He was roundly criticized for this, including within his party.
The parties represented in the Bundestag have all ruled out a coalition with the AfD.
