A far-right group in the European Parliament announced Thursday that it had ousted the Alternative for Germany party from its coalition, dealing a blow to a key alliance just two weeks before European parliamentary elections.
In a report on his official X accountThe Identity and Democracy Group wrote that it had decided to exclude Alternative for Germany, or AfD, because of comments made by Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s leading candidate in the upcoming elections.
In an interview last week, Mr. Krah appeared to downplay crimes committed by the SS, the Nazi paramilitary force that killed millions during the Holocaust. “A million soldiers wore the SS uniform,” Krah told La Repubblica and The Financial Times in a joint interview. “Can you really say that because someone was an officer in the Waffen-SS, they were a criminal? “We must establish individual guilt.”
In its press release, Identity and Democracy writes that it “no longer wants to be associated with the incidents involving Maximilian Krah, head of the AfD list for the European elections”.
The AfD’s exclusion from the group, which includes the League in Italy and the National Rally in France, is a sign that the AfD’s domestic problems are beginning to spill over into European Union politics.
The fact that Identity & Democracy decided to suppress the AfD before the elections suggests that other far-right parties in Europe feared that the German delegation would become a liability. The European Union has 27 member states. About 400 million voters They are eligible to elect the 705 deputies of the European Parliament. Far-right parties are expected to win a record number of votes.
Jordan Bardella, the leader of the National Rally, reacted quickly to Mr. Krah’s comments, saying French TF1 that the AfD had “crossed red lines” and vowed that his party “would no longer sit alongside the AfD”.
Mr. Krah has been at the center of several recent scandals in Germany. After the party held an emergency meeting this week, Mr Krah announced he was leaving the AfD board of directors. He will also stop campaigning.
“This represents a significant loss of power,” Hajo Funke, an analyst specializing in right-wing extremism in Germany, said of the AfD’s ouster. “Without a group, the AfD is even more isolated than it already is.”
Mr Krah’s interview is the latest in a series of blows to the AfD. In January, hundreds of thousands of Germans took to the streets after an investigation revealed a secret meeting between AfD leaders and far-right extremists in which they discussed the organization mass expulsions.
Last month, an aide to Mr. Krah was arrested on suspicion of being an agent of the Chinese government. Although Mr. Krah has not been charged, authorities searched his office, leading to speculation that he may also be under investigation.
This month, the the police searched the offices of Petr Bystron, the second member of the AfD present in the European elections. Mr Bystron is under investigation for receiving funds from Russia. Like Mr. Krah, Mr. Bystron was removed from the election campaign.
Both men are expected to win their seats in the European Parliament next month, but their power will be significantly reduced if they fail to put together their own coalition.