The right-wing Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament (EP) announced on Thursday afternoon (23 May) that it had expelled the scandal-plagued German AfD party.
According to ID sources, members of the ID group voted 5-3 to expel the German party from the group. This leaves the AfD without a political group in Europe two weeks before the EP elections.
In a short press release, AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said they ‘take note of the decision of the ID group’.
On Wednesday, the AfD tried to appease its European partners by withdrawing two of its scandal-plagued candidates from the election campaign.
Petr Bystron is accused of receiving money from Russia through a propaganda network (Voice of Europe), while Maximilian Krah is under investigation for his close ties to China.
A former aide to Krah has also been accused of working for Chinese intelligence and was recently arrested. On 7 May, Belgian police raided Krah’s office at AP.
But the last straw was Krah’s controversial interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica over the weekend, in which he stated that not every member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) during the Third Reich was “automatically guilty”.
On Wednesday, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party, which is also part of the ID, dealt a further blow by ending its cooperation with the AfD in the EP in response to Krah’s comments.
“The AfD in the European Parliament is paying the price for Maximilian Krah’s uncontrolled statements, which have damaged the AfD in Germany and isolated it in the EU,” Christine Anderson, head of the AfD delegation in the EP, and Gunnar Beck, deputy leader of the group, said in a statement.
According to ID sources, the parties of France, Italy, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic voted to expel the AfD, while the parties of Austria, Estonia and Germany voted to keep the AfD in the group.
The vote of the Danish party, which abstained in the vote, was technically counted as ‘in favour’ under the ID’s ‘hesitation’ clause, under which non-voters are deemed to agree with the party. Its candidate for the leadership, Anders Vistisen, had given the AfD an ultimatum to expel Krah or be expelled from the group after the European elections.
According to AfD sources, the party is considering appealing the decision, believing that the Czech vote is invalid because the Czechs did not directly answer the question of whether the AfD should be expelled, but instead stated that they “agree with Marine Le Pen’s position”.
If this view is confirmed, only three parties will have voted for the expulsion of the German party and three against. An absolute majority of five votes is required to expel a member.
However, since the expulsion will not take place until after the elections, opposition to the decision is seen as a purely political move.
But the AfD leadership is already looking ahead to the post-election period, and is confident that it will find other parties to work with. “In order to be politically effective in Brussels, cooperation with the relevant parties is essential. We are therefore confident that we will continue to find reliable partners in the new legislative period,” the press release said.
