AfD party leader Alice Weidel. Image ANP / EPA
Weidel said this in an interview with Financial Times on Tuesday. “It is a model for Germany, which can make such a sovereign decision,” she says about Brexit. According to her, leaving the EU will only strengthen Germany’s self-determination.
The promise of a Dexit by the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) comes after major criticism of the party after it emerged that prominent members had discussed large-scale deportations of migrants. They had a secret meeting with right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis about a ‘master plan’ for such a large-scale deportation. Demonstrations against the AfD and other far-right movements took place in dozens of German cities over the weekend.
Over by author
Stieven Ramdharie has been foreign editor of De Volkskrant for over 20 years, with defense as his main specialism.
Weidel says that the AFD, which is now the second-largest party in the country in polls, will first advocate for reform of the EU in the government. She wants, among other things, a limitation of the powers of the European Commission. “If reform is not possible, if we fail to rebuild the sovereignty of EU member states, we must let the citizens decide, just as Britain did,” Weidel said. “And we could have a referendum on Dexit.”
Forbid
The AfD’s anti-European position is at odds with that of a large part of the German population. Polls every year show that an overwhelming majority of Germans support EU membership. However, this is not the case among the supporters of the AfD, which has a third of the voters in some states.
Although the party continues to rise in the opinion polls and has now even become larger than Chancellor Olav Scholz’s largest governing party SPD, the chance that the AfD will ever form a government is slim. A ‘grand coalition’ of SPD and the Christian-democratic CDU/CSU can prevent the controversial AfD from ever coming to power.
Also at the regional level, the party, which was founded in 2013, has so far failed to become part of the governments in the states due to the ‘cordon sanitary’ of the other parties. In Germany, there are calls to ban the AfD because of its extremist positions. This should be done through a procedure before the Constitutional Court.
Party financing
But previous attempts to ban another far-right party, the NPD, failed. German politicians are also calling for the withdrawal of the subsidies and tax benefits to which the AfD, like other political parties, is entitled. In a ruling that could also have consequences for the AfD, the court decided on Tuesday to take away party financing with taxpayers’ money from the NPD, now called Die Heimat, for six years.
It is the first time that the court has taken such a decision against a political party. The ruling means that this party is no longer entitled to certain tax benefits. The NPD did not receive government subsidies because it did not get enough votes in recent elections. Under German law, political parties can lose the financial support they are entitled to if they are found guilty of undermining the democratic order.
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2024-01-23 11:15:00
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