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MUNICH — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday strongly rejected U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s demand that mainstream parties not impose “firewalls” against far-right groupings.
Scholz said Germany would “not accept it if outsiders interfere in our democracy, in our elections and in the democratic formation of opinion in favor of ” the nationalist Alternative for Germany [AfD] party.
The German leader said that support for the far-right party ran counter to the country’s lessons from its Nazi past. The Trump administration’s backing of the AfD “is not proper — especially not among friends and allies, and we firmly reject that,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
Vance in his Munich speech on Friday railed against Europe’s establishment politics, urged the continent to curb migration and compared EU leaders to Soviet commissars. He said “there is no room for firewalls,” referencing Germany’s mainstream political parties’ stance rejecting cooperation with the far-right AfD.
Vance also met with AfD lead candidate Alice Weidel on Friday, triggering even stronger backlash from various German politicians. He did not meet with Scholz.
The U.S. vice president’s shock to German politics comes just one week ahead of the German general election on Feb. 23.
According to Scholz: “We will decide for ourselves what happens to our democracy.”
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