German right-wing rise sparks concerns in EU

Like many far-right and populist parties in Europe, Germany's Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has witnessed growing public support in recent polls but its anti-immigration and Euroskepticism stance has raised concern in some corners of the European Union.

On Monday, French Minister of State for European Affairs Laurence Boone lashed out at AfD, whose congress, which concluded over the weekend, called the EU a "failed project". She told broadcaster LCI that AfD is "founded in hatred of a scapegoat".

Boone said the 10-year-old German party will "destroy the EU with no alternative project" and is a "peril for European stability".

Boone's words came after AfD party members gathered for the last two weekends in the east German city of Magdeburg to adopt a political platform ahead of the 2024 European elections.

The platform, published on Sunday, said "we think the EU cannot be reformed and see it as a failed project" in all important areas, including migration and climate policy.

AfD has called for a "federation of EU nations" and rejected the euro as a currency. Its platform said the main tasks of the new federation should be the protection of external borders against migration, strategic autonomy in security policy and the preservation of "different identities" in Europe.

While several AfD officials had previously expressed the wish for Germany to quit the EU, also known as "Dexit", the new party platform does not call for the "orderly dissolution of the EU", which was in an earlier draft. Instead, it said AfD supports the idea of a "Europe of fatherlands, a Europe community of sovereign, democratic states".

The AfD convention finalized its list of 35 candidates for the European Parliament election next year. Maximilian Krah, an AfD Member of the European Parliament since 2019 and a lawyer by training, was named the party's top candidate in the 2024 election after winning 65.7 percent of the votes.

Systemic reform

Krah told radio station DLF a week ago that some form of political coordination is needed at the European level, but he called for a systemic reform of the EU with the aim of giving a significant amount of control back to nation-states.

"We want 80 percent less Europe and more national self-government," he said.

There is great expectation that AfD will do well in the 2024 elections given that the latest polls put the party only second after the center-right Christian Democratic Union but way ahead of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democratic Party.

Last week, AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla voiced the party's prospects of winning three state elections in eastern Germany next year. He told party delegates that "we could take on government responsibility".

Georgina Wright, director of Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne, told BBC she believes the far-right renaissance in Europe is largely because of dissatisfaction with the political mainstream.

Agencies contributed to this story.

chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn