Maximilian Krah from Saxony will lead the AfD as the top candidate in next year's European elections. The right-wing populists strongly criticize the EU, some want Germany to leave.
Magdeburg - The AfD wants to go into the 2024 European election campaign with the top candidate Maximilian Krah and build a "Fortress Europe" together with other parties. This is needed "to protect our homeland, and we are doing this together with our European partners," said co-party leader Alice Weidel at the European election meeting of the right-wing populists in Magdeburg.
Among others, the Saxon MEP Maximilian Krah is to realize this. The 46-year-old was elected to first place on the list with 65.7 percent approval. "We are now the most exciting right-wing party in all of Europe," Krah said in his application speech. The largely unknown Andreas Otti from Berlin had competed against him. He received 25.2 percent of the vote. Overall, there were 9.1 percent "no" votes.
Not without controversy
Krah's candidacy was not without controversy in the party, and there was several troubles in the EU Parliament because of him. The right-wing nationalist parliamentary group Identity and Democracy (ID) had suspended him for three months at the beginning of the year. It was about the accusation that Krah is said to have manipulated the awarding of a PR contract of the parliamentary group.
His membership in the parliamentary group had already been suspended for several months in 2022. At the time, he was accused of publicly supporting the party of right-wing extremist Éric Zemmour in the French presidential election campaign rather than Marine Le Pen of ID's Rassemblement National.
Krah accused his opponents within the party of conducting a months-long anonymous smear campaign against him. The lawyer has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. Until 2016 he was a member of the CDU.
At the weekend, the approximately 600 delegates want to fill more places on the list. From party circles, it was said that there could be up to 150 applications. Mariana Harder-Kühnel, a member of the federal executive board, said the goal was to elect at least 30 candidates.
Assembly with interruption
Contrary to the original plan, the first step was to nominate candidates for the European elections. The election programme is to be decided afterwards. It is expected that the election of the candidates will take several days. On Sunday, the meeting will be adjourned, only to resume next Friday.
The day before, Weidel had at a national party congress in a debate on the accession of the AfD delegation to the European party "Identity and Democracy" to ensure that a motion by supporters of a withdrawal of Germany from the European Union was rejected. On Saturday, she said that the EU was deeply undemocratic and encroaching, interfering in private life and in corporate life.
+Alice Weidel in Magdeburg.
© Carsten Koall/dpa
Thuringia's AfD chairman Björn Höcke called for the abolition of the European Union in its current form on the sidelines of the meeting. "There are many reasons to reject the EU, it does not bring Europe further," said the politician, who was described by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a right-wing extremist, in the phoenix interview. "This EU must die so that the real Europe can live." Höcke pleaded for a new European confederation of states.
The alliance "Solidarisches Magdeburg" protested against the assembly. A demonstration march with several hundred participants formed on Saturday in the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Dpa