Europe’s far right in disarray as Germany’s AfD
candidate resigns
Maximilian Krah’s SS remark highlights growing
divisions within European far-right and nationalist groups
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
Wed 22 May
2024 15.22 CEST
The lead
candidate for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliamentary
election has resigned from the German far-right party’s leadership, as growing
divisions between Europe’s nationalist parties threaten to undermine their
expected gains in next month’s ballot.
Maximilian
Krah, who last weekend told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the SS,
the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”, said in a
statement on Wednesday that his comments were “being misused as a pretext to
damage our party”.
His SS
remark, the latest in a series of controversies involving Krah and AfD, this
week prompted France’s far-right National Rally (RN) to say it would no longer
sit in the same European parliamentary group as the German party after the June
elections.
Marine Le
Pen, RN’s leader, who has spent years trying to normalise her party to appeal
to mainstream voters, confirmed on Wednesday that it needed to make a “clean
break”, accusing AfD of being held hostage by its most radical elements.
“It was
urgent to establish a cordon sanitaire,” Le Pen told French radio. “The AfD
goes from provocation to provocation. Now it’s no longer time to distance
ourselves – it’s time to make a clean break with this movement.”
The two
parties currently dominate the European parliament’s radical right Identity and
Democracy (ID) group, which also includes Matteo Salvini’s League in Italy,
Austria’s Freedom party (FPÖ), Geert Wilders’ Freedom party (PVV) in the
Netherlands and Vlaams Belang in Belgium.
The group’s
members – many of which are still viewed as extreme in their national contexts
– are on course to become the biggest winners of the European elections, with
polls predicting their total seat tally could rise from 59 MEPs to about 85.
The
national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which
includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS),
Spain’s Vox, the Finns and the Sweden Democrats, is also expected to advance,
to about 75 seats.
However, a
major shake-up of the parliament’s rightwing and far-right groups now appears
inevitable, with the formation of one or more new groups possible and little
certainty as to how – or indeed whether – they will be able to work together.
AfD has
shot up the polls to become Germany’s second most popular party this year, but
its support has recently dropped by several percentage points amid intense
scrutiny of its policies and the conduct of some of its leaders, including
Krah.
The party
faced mass street protests earlier this year after senior figures attended a
meeting where the deportation of Germans with immigrant backgrounds was
discussed, and over allegations that it harbours agents for Russia and China.
Last week,
a German court ruled that domestic security services could continue to keep the
AfD under surveillance as a potentially extremist party. The party denies all
allegations of racism, dismissing criticism as politically motivated.
On
Wednesday Krah, who is being personally investigated for alleged links to
Russia and China, which he denies, said “the last thing that the party needs
now is is a debate about me”.
He said it
was essential that AfD maintained its unity in the run-up to the 6-9 June
elections and that “for this reason, I will not be making any more campaign
appearances and will be stepping down as a member of the federal committee”.
Polls
suggest Le Pen’s RN, meanwhile, will easily win the European election in
France, with the party’s list – headed by Jordan Bardella – set to receive 31%
of the national vote, almost double the score of President Emmanuel Macron’s
centrist coalition.
RN’s
campaign manager, Alexandre Loubet, told local media on Tuesday that the party
had had “frank discussions” with AfD, but that Bardella had taken the decision
to split from the German party because “lessons have not been learned”.
Analysts
said the move was clearly made with domestic politics in mind, with Le Pen, who
scored 41% in the second round of France’s 2022 presidential vote, likely to
have her best chance yet of capturing the Elysée in elections due in 2027.
“This shows
Le Pen doesn’t care about EU or the game in Brussels,” said Mujtaba Rahman of
the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy. “All she wants to do is polish
her domestic image in France. It’s all about domestic politics.”
It does,
however, leave the future of the far right’s collective influence in Europe in
doubt. It is unclear whether RN plans to leave ID, or try to have AfD – which
is on course to win 16 MEPs – excluded, or how other members of the group will
respond.
Italy’s
prime minister, Meloni, has repeatedly said she hopes to unite Europe’s various
rightwing parties which, while agreeing on issues such as migration and
fighting green legislation, are deeply split on others including their
relationship with Russia.
ECR members
are mostly populist, nationalist and conservative, and have been (or are) in
government. They are EU-critical but generally seen as relatively constructive
at the EU level, having frequently helped draft EU legislation, and back
Ukraine.
ID members,
by contrast, are mostly populist far-right, more Moscow-friendly, and
EU-disruptive: AfD talks favourably of a “Dexit” referendum, while RN ’s
proposed “national preference” in jobs and benefits are not compatible with the
single market.
Ursula von
der Leyen, the centre-right president of the European Commission, has not ruled
out working with ECR after the elections, but would be unlikely to do so if the
group included RN – still less AfD or other more radical ID members such as
PVV.
Either way,
said Cas Mudde, a populism and far right specialist at the University of
Georgia, the RN-AfD split was “a big decision for RN and for Europe’s far
right. It almost certainly will hurt their already fairly limited political
power in Brussels … Politically, it could become a pyrrhic victory if the
parties remain so divided.”
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