After distancing from AfD
After meeting Le Pen, Weidel raves about the similarities
February 20, 2024, 7:40 p.m
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After the reports about the Potsdam meeting, Marine Le Pen distances herself from the AfD. At a personal meeting between the French right-wing populist and Alice Weidel, the mood is apparently less tense. The AfD politician speaks of many parallels.
AfD leader Alice Weidel met with French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen to discuss her threat to exclude the AfD from the joint parliamentary group in the EU Parliament. After the reports about the Potsdam meeting between AfD politicians and right-wing extremists, Le Pen publicly distanced himself from the AfD – but there was a lot of common ground at the meeting in Paris, explained Weidel.
“We have discovered that we are pursuing the same approaches to solving the major problems of today,” wrote Weidel on the online service X. The conversation in a Paris restaurant was about the campaign for the European elections, cooperation in the parliamentary group as well as German and French domestic politics, said Weidel’s spokesman.
A warm welcome
Le Pen, who belongs to the right-wing populist Rassemblement National (RN) party, had threatened to be expelled from the joint group in the European Parliament after reports from the Correctiv network about the Potsdam secret meeting with right-wing extremists. Both Le Pen and the AfD then announced a clarifying conversation, which has now taken place. Weidel wrote on X about the “warm welcome” that the RN politician gave her in Paris.
The leader of Le Pen’s right-wing populist RN party, Jordan Bardella, also took part in the conversation, Weidel’s spokesman said. Weidel made her position clear at the meeting. Programmatically there are no differences between Weidel and the RN. Le Pen is currently leader of the RN parliamentary group in the French National Assembly. The AfD and RN belong to the Identity and Democracy faction in the EU Parliament. Bardella is its vice chairman. The European elections will take place on June 9th.