Germany’s largest far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been expelled from its pan-European group Identity and Democracy in the European Parliament following a series of scandals, according to two people working with the party.
Those tensions came to a boil this week when Maximilian Krah, a senior AfD lawmaker, told an Italian newspaper that members of the Nazi SS were not necessarily criminals. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally party belongs to the same grouping as the AfD, has said she no longer wants to sit with the party.
The ID group’s leadership has now voted to expel the AfD, two weeks before millions of people head to the polls to vote in the European election.
Jaak Madison, an Estonian MEP in the ID group, told POLITICO: “I voted to throw out Krah as he has been the problem in this case and also previously with several things like Russia-China questions. But I did not support to punish all the Germans, because the whole delegation agreed to expel Krah.”
Last month German authorities charged one of Krah’s parliamentary assistants with spying for Beijing, and another AfD candidate has been embroiled in a cash-for-influence scandal involving a pro-Russian propaganda outlet.
Tensions have been running high for months between the AfD and other ID parties in Parliament.
Krah, the scandal-plagued lead candidate in the EU election for the AfD party, announced Wednesday that he would pause his campaign and step down from his party’s leadership board — while remaining the party’s top candidate ahead of the EU election.
POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows AfD on track to win 16 percent of votes, down from 22 percent in January.
French far-right leader Le Pen warned in January that she might want to part ways with the German party following reports about AfD wanting to “remigrate” parts of the population, including naturalized German citizens.
The news was first reported by German news agency dpa.
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