The far-right Alternative for Germany party considered the European Union a “bankrupt project” that requires a radical transformation, but without calling for its dissolution, in a text issued Sunday at a conference.
More than 600 members of the anti-immigrant party met this weekend in Magdeburg, one of its strongholds in the east of the country, to finalize its program for next year’s European elections.
This party ranks second in voting intentions, behind the conservatives from the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union.
“We consider the European Union to be incorrigible and we see it as a bankrupt project,” the Alternative for Germany party wrote.
Instead, the party wants the establishment of a federal union of European countries, and a new economic community with European interests that preserves the sovereignty of member states.
The AfD text doesn’t repeat what was stated last June when they called for an orderly solution to the European Union, which the German far Right party leaders describe as an “Editorial Error”.
In 2019, the AfD’s platform for the European elections put forward Dixit as a “last chance” if the whole EU isn’t reformed within a reasonable deadline.
It was the first time in post-war German history that a political party dared to publicly question the country’s long-held idea of belonging to the European Union.
Attachment to the European Union has long served as an alternative national identity in Germany, which was riddled with decades of shame over Nazi barbarism.
After achieving unprecedented results in opinion polls, the far right is looking to be one of the largest parties in the country, a year before the European and regional elections, and on the verge of the parliamentary elections in 2025.
In recent opinion polls, it has come second at the national level (19 to 22%), ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, and behind the current opposition conservatives (26 to 27%).
This team won 78 deputies out of 736 in the Bundestag, i.e. the penultimate rank among the parliamentary blocs in terms of number.
The Alternative for Germany party founded in February 2013, and was originally an anti-euro party, before becoming anti-Islam and anti-immigration.
The party’s popularity is increasing due to the dissatisfaction of part of the people with the current government coalition consisting of social democrats, environmentalists and liberals, and with inflation and immigration.
