The right-wing populist Rassemblement National in France makes good on its threats and ends cooperation with the German AfD. “The decision has been made” to no longer “sit in parliament” with the AfD, EU election campaign manager Alexandre Loubet said on Tuesday. The reason is statements about the SS from the ranks of the AfD.
The AfD’s leading candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, told the Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica’ this weekend that not every SS man was a criminal. According to the AfD politician, guilt must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In France, the statements were interpreted as a trivialization of the Nazi era.
Until now, the AfD, like Rassemblement National (National Rally Movement, RN) and FPÖ, belongs to the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) faction in the European Parliament. But since November at the latest, huge differences have become clear: after the secret meeting in Potsdam on ‘remigration’, the French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen has clearly distanced herself from the AfD on behalf of her RN and threatened to end their cooperation.
“We draw the consequences”
Even a visit by AfD leader Alice Weidel to Paris at the end of February could not reassure French right-wing populists. Campaign manager Loubet now said about the AfD: “We have had open discussions, but we have learned nothing from them. Now we draw the consequences.”
Le Pen has been trying to woo conservative voters for years and has prescribed a course of “devilization” for her party, the former National Front. The now 55-year-old even fell out with her father and party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom she expelled from the party because of his stubborn denial of the Holocaust. She is no longer at the head of the party.
Le Pen comes closer to the Italian Meloni
It remains to be seen what will happen next in the far-right camp in the European Parliament. Le Pen has repeatedly stood at the side of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the ultra-right Fratelli d’Italia (FdI). Meloni’s party belongs to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament. The right-wing extremist Spanish party Vox and the national-conservative PiS party from Poland are also based there.
Source: Krone
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