A few weeks before the elections, the ID group declared that it did not want to be associated with incidents involving Maximilian Krah of the AfD.
The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament announced that it had decided to expel the Alternative for Germany (AfD) delegation a few weeks before the parliamentary elections.
The move follows comments made this weekend by Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s leading election candidate, in an Italian newspaper that members of the Nazi SS paramilitary forces were “not all criminals”.
“The Bureau of the Identity and Democracy Group in the European Parliament decided today to exclude the German delegation, the AfD, with immediate effect,” ID said in a statement on Thursday.
“The ID Group no longer wants to be associated with the incidents involving Maximilian Krah, head of the AfD list for the European elections,” said the press release.
Krah, 47, whose assistant was accused of spying for China, has already had to resign from the AfD leadership council and has promised not to campaign again, although he is still seeking to be re-elected to the European Parliament.
The far-right parties in the Assembly are currently divided between the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), whose de facto leader is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and the ID group, led by the National Rally of Marine Le Pen.
It is the latest blow to the AfD in a chaotic few months. France’s Le Pen abandoned the party, seen as an unsuitable partner, as it faced unfavorable court rulings and concerns over its ties to China and Russia.
“Clean break”
“It is time to definitively break with this movement which is unmanaged and which is visibly under the influence of radical groups within it,” Le Pen said.
National Rally MP Jean-Paul Garraud, who sits on the ID board, confirmed that his party was behind the initiative to expel its German partner.
He told Agence France-Presse that Krah’s party as a whole bore responsibility for his “inadmissible” comments as the lead candidate – “and, therefore, we decided to exclude the AfD “.
The AfD responded on Thursday that it had “taken note of the ID group’s decision” but insisted it remained optimistic about the June 6-9 elections.
The party insisted it would “continue to have reliable partners on our side during the new legislature”.
The AfD’s exclusion comes a day after Krah announced, following discussions with the party’s top leaders, that he would leave the federal steering committee.
The lawmaker is at the center of a deepening crisis after the arrest of one of his aides in the European Parliament on suspicion of spying for China.
Krah and another key AfD candidate, Petr Bystron, were also forced to deny allegations that they accepted money to disseminate pro-Russian positions on a Moscow-funded news site.
Bystron, who is second on the AfD’s list for the European Union elections, said on Wednesday that he too would stop participating in campaign events, citing “family reasons.”
The ID group was made up of 59 European lawmakers from eight countries, with the largest delegations being the Italian League with 23 lawmakers and the French National Rally with 18.
