Time.news – “The Afd expressly supports the alliance” of European sovereignists. Word of Joerg Meuthen, leader of the German ultra-right party, about the common declaration of the European right against the “EU superstate” launched among others by Viktor Orban, Giorgia Meloni, Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen. Responding to the Nd-news portal, the president of Alternative fuer Deutschland says he believes his party “Will enter the alliance in the near future”, but does not explain what are the reasons why the Afd has not yet signed the document.
Alliance “against EU centralism”
When the initiative of sixteen radical right-wing formations from all over Europe was announced on 2 July – including the Brothers of Italy and the League, as well as the Polish Pis, the Hungarian Fidesz, the French Unite National, the Austrian Fpoe and the Spanish Vox – for a sort of alliance “against the centralism of the EU”, strengthening the competences of individual member states in order to prevent the birth of a “superstate” that would destroy “the European tradition”, the list of commentators absent: precisely the Afd, but also the Swedish Democrats, the True Finns, the Belgians of the N-Va and the Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders.
The idea of a group in the European Parliament
The ambitions of the alliance are not small: the idea is to form a parliamentary group united with the European Parliament. “From today’s point of view such a group would be the second force, with the aim of becoming the first in the next European elections”, he assured the leader of the Fpoe, Herbert Kickl. The attempts to unite the forces of the right to the right of the EPP are as old as the EU itself: but so far they have never been crowned with success. An emblematic case from this point of view is the Afd. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Orban himself has shown that he “has no interest” in collaborating with the German ultra-right, in the dock for an excessively radical national policy even for the Hungarian premier. Rather, it is commented in the European capitals, the real point is that Orban currently has no parliamentary group, after his exclusion from the PPE, and the search for new partners where to accommodate the twelve Hungarian MEPs is still ongoing.
The crux of the exit from the Union
In addition, Nd always comments, one of the obstacles to the Afd’s involvement in the international of the radical right is the same program presented for the German elections on September 26th, where the national-populist formation asks for nothing less than “Germany’s exit from the European Union and the foundation of a new economic and European community of interests”. A line – that of a “Dexit” from the EU – which had been discussed with great vehemence at the AFD national congress last April and voted by a majority in contrast to the indication of the party leader, Meuthen.
More than just a reform
It is a formulation, the one expressed by the German ultra-right assembly, which obviously clashes with the idea of a simple even if “vast reform” of the EU. “The signing of the Afd on the Orban, Salvini & co document would appear to contradict its own electoral program”, commented in Berlin. A similar disagreement also concerns the Dutch formation of Wilders. He had also said so the vice president of Fidesz and minister to the Hungarian family Katalin Novak: “In place of the Afd, which at its congress expressed its intention to leave the EU, we seek collaboration with parties that aspire to reform from within the Union”. In another interview, Minister Novak herself explained that “our partners in Germany are the conservative parties CDU / CSU. We have no intention of changing the line from this point of view ”. A general picture that, apparently, goes in the direction contrary to the enthusiastic declarations of Meuthen himself, who still in 2019 imagined that the Afd could take on “a central actor” of a European ultra-right alliance, so much so that he participated in the meeting organized that same year by Salvini in Milan.
The CDU marks the distance from the League
As a demonstration of how complex this intertwining is, the CDU itself wanted to emphasize once again the distance towards Salvini, an ally of Orban: “Here there is no place for today’s League”, he said Daniel Caspary, Christian Democrat leader in the European Parliament, on Twitter, except to say the day before to Welt that “if the League were to recognize itself in the future to an explicitly pro-European line, we could perhaps speak of its participation in the EPP parliamentary group”. Finally, adding: “Europeanist for us means a clear commitment to all European values, see the rule of law, freedom of the press and equal opportunities”.
The other points of disagreement
Obviously there are considerable differences within the various European radical right-wing forces also on other issues – it is always the Faz to list them – starting with relations with Russia. Vladimir Putin and, in contrast, with NATO: the Atlantic Alliance for the Dutch Pis continues to have “a central role” for the security of Europe, while Le Pen would like to leave it.
As regards relations with the EU, in the English version of the declaration of the sixteen signatories it is stated that “the integration process has greatly contributed to creating lasting structures of collaboration and peacekeeping”, an expression which – as the Frankfurt newspaper – disappears completely in the French version released by Marine Le Pen’s party. The leader of the National gathering again last weekend he reiterated that “national integration and independence cannot be combined” and that his goal is to “free France from the yoke of the European Union”, this being “the armed arm of globalization “.
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