Germany’s AfD hopes for far-right victory in France

The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party said she was hoping for a decisive victory for France’s Rassemblement National in today’s parliamentary election, despite a rift between the parties that she acknowledged would be hard to heal.

Alice Weidel told the Financial Times she was “keeping her fingers crossed” for the RN and was optimistic that Jordan Bardella, its leader, would become France’s youngest-ever prime minister.

“I have full confidence in Bardella and the RN’s ability to shake up their country,” she said.

The RN’s popularity showed the whole of the European right now “had the wind in its sails”, said Bernd Baumann, the AfD’s chief whip in the Bundestag. “Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, the FPÖ in Austria — they are all an affirmation for us and show that we are on the right side of history.”

But Weidel acknowledged there was little chance of the AfD and RN overcoming the conflict that led to the German party’s expulsion from the Identity and Democracy group (ID) in the European parliament in May after a series of scandals.

Weidel said the AfD was “looking for new partners and trying to form our own group”. She also insisted she had “no hard feelings” towards Marine Le Pen, the RN’s parliamentary leader.

But the likelihood is that the AfD’s isolation in Europe will now deepen — especially after one of its closest allies, the FPÖ, announced on Sunday it was forming the new right-populist group Patriots for Europe with Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and ANO of the Czech Republic.

AfD sources acknowledged it was highly unlikely that their party would be accepted into the new alliance.

An AfD official said Fidesz would prevent the AfD from joining the group, out of fear of antagonising big German companies that have investments in Hungary. “On the other hand, the whole party landscape in the European parliament is in flux right now, and that means there are a lot of free delegations on the market,” he added.

Weidel was speaking to the FT shortly after being re-elected as AfD co-leader at the party’s annual conference in the west German city of Essen this weekend.

The event was overshadowed by mass protests as thousands of Germans converged on Essen to express their opposition to a party they see as pro-Russian, xenophobic and anti-democratic.

Although it has been designated a suspected extreme rightwing organisation by German domestic intelligence, the AfD is the most successful far-right party in Germany since the second world war. It scored 15.9 per cent in this month’s European elections, its best-ever result in a nationwide vote.

But in Europe, it is increasingly seen as a pariah.

The AfD has been hit by a series of scandals over the past few months that has damaged its reputation in Europe and soured its relations with other far-right parties that should be its natural allies.

Some of its functionaries were revealed late last year to have discussed plans to deport millions of foreigners, even those with German passports. Its leading candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, has faced searching questions about his links to China and Russia, and scandalised many in Europe with an interview in which he said not everyone who served in the SS was a criminal. That was the trigger for the RN to sever its ties with the AfD.

Weidel acknowledged that the SS interview was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. “The frustration with our party just became too great,” she said. 

She added that Krah’s gaffes and legal problems were one reason why the AfD had not done as well as many had predicted in the European elections. Late last year it was polling at 23 to 24 per cent, way ahead of all the parties in chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way coalition.

In her speech to the conference, she admitted the campaign had been “turbulent”. “It was a bumpy ride, we had some God-almighty rows,” she told delegates.

Her co-leader Tino Chrupalla said that in future the party “must look a lot more closely” at its candidates.

In the interview, Weidel said her “favoured scenario” would be for the RN to leave ID and form a new group, possibly with Fidesz, which would provide the AfD with the opportunity to resume co-operation with the parties left behind in the ID.

However, she was speaking before the creation of Patriots for Europe, a development that might increase the chances of the AfD being left out in the cold.

She said the AfD would not form an alliance with other far-right parties in the parliament “just to be in a group”. “In that case we’d prefer to just stay on our own,” she said.