The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party announced on Monday January 29 upcoming discussions with the leader of the French far right Marine Le Pen, who had recently distanced herself from her German ally shaken by a scandal surrounding “
remigration
” .
The talks will aim to “
rectify reality
,” Alternative for Germany MP Bernd Baumann said in Berlin.
“
We consider that this is a misunderstanding (...) which we hope to clarify soon
,” a spokesperson for Maximilian Krah, MEP and AfD candidate for the presidency, also told AFP on Monday. European elections at the beginning of June.
Marine Le Pen said she was ready on Thursday to break with the AfD, saying she "
totally disagreed with the proposal which would have been discussed or would have been decided within the framework
" of a meeting in Potsdam, near Berlin, where a plan for mass expulsion from the country of foreigners and “unassimilated citizens” had been presented, according to the German investigative media Correctiv.
Representatives of the radical identity movement and members of the AfD - including a close friend, since dismissed - of co-president Alice Weidel, took part in this meeting.
“Mass expulsion”
Marine Le Pen's distancing was considered all the more spectacular as in the European Parliament, the National Rally (RN) and the AfD sit in the same group - Identity and Democracy (ID) - where they respectively have 18 and 10 seats, out of 63 members.
And the German ally currently seems all the more essential as it receives more than 20% of voting intentions in the European elections.
According to Mr. Baumann, the head of the RN made her statements “
on the basis of press reports of which she became aware
” and which according to him were “
entirely false in their tone
”.
Terms such as “
deportation
” and “
mass expulsion
” were not used during the meeting, assured Mr. Baumann, for whom these are erroneous attributions on the part of Correctiv and a large part of the press.
The Correctiv revelation caused shock waves in Germany.
It led to a massive mobilization in the streets of civil society aimed at denouncing the dangers for democracy of the AfD, a party which has firmly established itself in the German political landscape since its entry into the Bundestag in 2017.