Right-wing group at European Parliament excludes AfD

The alliance of populist right-wing parties at the European Parliament, called Identity and Democracy (ID), on Thursday removed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from its ranks. 

"The Bureau of the Identity and Democracy Group in the European Parliament has decided today to exclude the German delegation, AfD, with immediate effect," it said in a statement. 

The development follows a pair of scandals this month centered around the AfD's lead candidate for next month's European Parliament elections, Maximilian Krah.

First, he suspended a senior staff member, amid news they were being charged with spying for China. Krah's own ties to both China and Russia have also come into question since.

Then, comments in an Italian newspaper over the weekend about the Nazi era upset allies elsewhere in Europe, particularly in countries like France that fought against Germany in World War II.

The pair of problems struck amid the European election campaign. The AfD itself banned Krah from making any further campaign appearances on Wednesday this week, seemingly seeking to contain the fallout. 

Proposal to oust AfD sent to leading members of alliance on Thursday

The proposal to remove the AfD was sent to leading members of parties within the so-called Identity and Democracy alliance on Thursday. 

The text of the motion said that the proposal came amid a "string of incidents involving Mr. Maximilian Krah and — by extension — the German delegation of the Group." 

It follows the leader of the French National Rally (RN) party, Marine Le Pen, saying earlier in the week that her party members would no longer sit with AfD members in the chamber after the June 9 election. 

Le Pen founded the ID group in 2019; her party is the largest in the alliance if measured by total voter support.

The apparent final straw was Krah's comments published in Italy over the weekend about German soldiers in World War II. Asked by la Repubblica whether all members of Heinrich Himmler's SS, which played a pivotal role in carrying out the mass exterminations of the Holocaust, were automatically criminals, Krah said he did not believe so.

These comments proved particularly unpopular in places like France and Eastern Europe that suffered under German wartime occupation.

AfD tried to offer up Krah and save itself

Meanwhile, the German party's representatives in Brussels and/or Strasbourg were trying to salvage the AfD's place in the European grouping by offering up Krah.

AfD European Parliament member Christine Anderson wrote in a letter to the party's leaders at the national level in Germany that the AfD had tried "in numerous discussions" to find a compromise with other members of the ID group. 

"In that process it again became clear that the German AfD delegation (or the AfD more generally) is not the problem. Our partners do however have a massive problem with Dr. Krah," Anderson wrote. 

She lamented that the party leadership in Germany had not distanced itself from Krah sufficiently publicly. She said the AfD's European Parliament group had since asked ID to throw Krah out itself, confirming German media reports to this effect published earlier on Thursday. 

The alternative — the AfD's exclusion from the ID alliance — could cost the party millions, she said.

ID is one of two rival factions oriented further to the right than the center-right Group of the European People's Party (sometimes also referred to as the Christian Democrats) that's the largest alliance in the European Parliament at present. It is typically seen as the more radical of the two.

msh/rc (dpa, Reuters)

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