Germany’s AfD party was expelled from its far-right faction in the European Parliament on Thursday after a series of scandals involving a high-profile lawmaker, in the closing stages of an EU election race in which the radical right is rampant.
The French National Rally (RN) and the Italian League – both partners of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) within parliament’s far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group – have made efforts to distance themselves from the party and its controversial legislature. Maximilian Krah.
Krah, the AfD’s top candidate in the June 6-9 polls, is under investigation for suspected ties to Russia and China. After making comments minimizing the crimes of the Nazis’ feared SS, the RN decided to draw the line.
Marine Le Pen’s party announced on Tuesday that it would no longer take a seat in the AfD in Brussels. Two days later, ID voted to expel the German party and its nine EU lawmakers.
“The ID Group no longer wants to be associated with the incidents surrounding Maximilian Krah,” it said in a statement.
“The Bureau of the Identity and Democracy Group in the European Parliament has today decided to exclude the German delegation, AfD, with immediate effect.”
Nicolai von Ondarza of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs saw the speed of ID’s action as a way to “signal in their election campaign that Le Pen and Co. want to present themselves as the more moderate.”
“This is really the end of the road of radicalization for the AfD, which has become too radical for even the most far-right edge of the European political spectrum to tolerate,” he wrote on platform X.
But the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed disdain for the idea that the German party was fundamentally in a different league from other European far-right movements – including RN.
“We need to be clear,” she wrote on X. “Different names, but all the same.”
“They are Putin’s puppets and proxies and they are trampling on our values,” she said, referring to the long-serving Russian leader.
– Clean break –
If you look at the writing on the wall, the AfD has already taken action to ban Krah from EU election campaign events – although it was electorally too late to remove the 47-year-old lawyer from the top of the list before the elections to delete.
But the RN said it was too little, too late.
RN parliamentarian Jean-Paul Garraud, who sits on ID’s leadership office, confirmed that the French party was behind the initiative to expel its German partner.
He told AFP that Krah’s AfD as a whole bore responsibility for his “inadmissible” comments as a main candidate.
The AfD said in response that it had “taken note of the ID group’s decision” but stressed that it remained optimistic for the upcoming elections.
The party said it will “continue to have reliable partners at our side in the new legislative period.”
Krah found himself at the center of a deepening crisis after one of his aides in the EU parliament was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
He and another leading AfD candidate, Petr Bystron, have also been forced to deny accusations that they accepted money to spread pro-Russian views on a Moscow-funded news website.
RN leader Jordan Bardella stated that Krah had finally crossed a “red line” after telling an Italian newspaper that not every member of the German SS was “automatically a criminal.”
The ID grouping is the sixth largest in the European Parliament, and the smaller of two far-right groups, after the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which also includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
Key issues are seen to divide the two far-right factions.
Most notably, ID is skeptical of continued EU support for Ukraine against the Russian invading army, while ECR supports Kiev in its fight.
And a third far-right force is in the EU parliament in the form of Fidesz, the unaffiliated party of Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
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