An the third day of their federal party conference, the AfD delegates got caught up in a dramatic European policy controversy, which has defied the authority of their newly elected chairmen. A resolution that advocated, among other things, the “consensual dissolution of the EU” became the argumentative battlefield between the right-wing fundamentalists and the moderate part of the party. Although the text of this motion had been approved by the competent foreign policy specialist committee, it met with sharp resistance in the debate.
The new party leader Alice Weidel spoke of linguistic inconsistencies. Others called the content “toxic” and “unbalanced” or complained that the application did not do justice to the current situation. Russia’s war in Ukraine is not called by its name, but is simply referred to as a “Ukraine conflict”. The Europe resolution was written by AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland and the chairman of the Thuringian AfD Björn Höcke, among others.
They state that the “Ukraine conflict has also shown that the security interests of Europe and the USA are not congruent”. Germany and Europe would have to decide “between a new bipolar struggle between superpowers (USA and China) or a multipolar world order of balancing interests and coexistence”. Regarding the current situation in Europe, the AfD authors formulate that the European “elites” are “geopolitical sleepwalkers” and “have sunk to become actors of forced globalization, while the populations have been subjected to the educational program of political correctness”. It goes on to say that the consequences of this are “the surrender of human and social certainties, a lack of will to assert oneself and the loss of the ability to defend”.
“Necessary Compromise with Russia”
Despite the invocation of the independence and military clout of the Europeans, the text pleads for a “reconciliation with Russia”. It says that “the necessary compromise with Russia must not impair the legitimate security needs of our Central and Eastern European partner countries”. Ukraine is granted the status of a “non-aligned and neutral bridge state”.
Höcke said in justification of the text that the AfD wanted to use the resolution to counteract the impression that it was only pleading for Germany to leave the EU. Instead, she wanted to “describe steps to overcome the EU”. The EU is the “institutionalized anti-Europe”. She promotes “approaches of decadence” and undertakes “attacks on our essence as Germans and Europeans”. According to the authors of the resolution, the EU should no longer exist but should be replaced by a new community with a common market, to be complemented by a “European Defense Community”.
After several attempts to return the controversial resolution to the competent technical committees for revision, none of which found the necessary majority, according to Weidel, the federal chairman Tino Chrupalla also tried in vain to settle the matter. He praised the “good application”, but nevertheless asked for it to be referred to the new federal executive board so that it could be processed again. His request was also rejected with the narrowest possible result of two votes.
This was followed by more and more extensive attempts to prevent a vote on the text – up to the point of order motion to end the party congress without a decision on this matter. The delegate who wanted to pull the emergency brake saw the work of the past three days in ruins: the party wanted to demonstrate unity and a new start by electing a new leadership – now they are achieving the opposite: “We are dismantling ourselves here”. . But his attempt failed with a narrow majority.
The next emergency brake was: interruption of the party congress for one hour; no majority for that either. Another attempt followed, which varied Chrupalla’s suggestion of remittance; again it was rejected by the narrowest of margins. Only at the third attempt did Chrupalla manage to prevent a vote and push through a referral to the federal executive board. He went to the stage microphone and gathered the AfD chairmen of several state associations around him. The party congress was then ended prematurely by majority vote. Last item on the agenda – the national anthem.