BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was expelled from the ranks of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament on Thursday following controversial remarks by its lead candidate in the elections European.
“The ID group no longer wants to be associated with the incidents involving Maximilian Krah, head of the AfD list for the European elections,” the group’s office said in a statement.
Maximilian Krah estimated in the Italian daily newspapers La Repubblica and the British daily The Financial Times that any member of the SS, the paramilitary organization of the Hitler regime, should not be considered “automatically [comme] a criminal”.
The French National Rally (RN) announced on Tuesday that it would break with the AfD because of these declarations deemed revisionist.
(Philip Blenkinsop and Benoit Van Overstraeten, French version Kate Entringer and Sophie Louet, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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