RN at a distance from AfD
Le Pen demands Weidel take a stand against “remigration”
February 25, 2024, 8:32 p.m
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The French right-wing populists from Rassemblement National are trying to get rid of the dirty image of a racist party. After a joint meeting, Marine Le Pen now calls on AfD leader Alice Weidel to refrain from “remigration” ideas in writing.
According to the right-wing populist Rassemblement National (RN) in France, AfD co-chairwoman Alice Weidel has committed to written “clarifications” about the AfD’s positions following reports about the Potsdam secret meeting with right-wing extremists. RN parliamentary group leader Marine Le Pen and he wanted to talk to Weidel at a meeting on Tuesday in order to express to her “our rejection of this measure, which consists of depriving people of their nationality,” said RN party leader Jordan Bardella on the broadcaster BFMTV . “She gave us a number of clarifications,” which she also promised in writing.
Bardella was referring to reports of a secret meeting in Potsdam. According to Correctiv research, AfD politicians, members of the right-wing conservative Values Union, right-wing extremists and entrepreneurs met in a hotel in November 2023 to discuss the expulsion of millions of people with an immigrant background from Germany. Martin Sellner, long-time spokesman for Austria’s right-wing extremist “Identitarian Movement”, presented a plan for such a mass expulsion, euphemistically called “remigration”.
Le Pen then clearly distanced himself from the AfD and threatened to end the joint group in the EU Parliament. AfD and RN both belong to the Identity and Democracy faction in the EU Parliament. Bardella is its vice chairman. Le Pen had also warned that she “does not want to spend the European election campaign reacting to what the AfD says or does.”
Weidel finally met with Bardella and Le Pen in Paris on Tuesday. There were a lot of similarities, Weidel explained afterwards. According to Bardella, the AfD co-chairwoman denied “that it is the position of her political movement to revoke people’s acquired citizenship on the grounds that they are of foreign origin.” “They are our allies, at least until proven otherwise, of course,” the RN party leader continued.