The National Rally (RN) prefers the risk of isolation to that of controversy. Two weeks before the European election, he broke with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, one of his main allies within the Identity and Democracy (ID) group. “We will no longer sit with them during the next term”definitively decided Alexandre Loubet, director of the campaign led by Jordan Bardella, Tuesday May 21, with Release.
Requested by The worldthe party confirms the rupture, taken “following recent statements by the AfD”. An outcome that Marine Le Pen distilled in private. “My religion is based on the AfDconfided the three-time presidential candidate last week. A movement that has fallen under the control of its most radical fringe no longer appears to me to constitute a reliable and suitable ally. »
It was before publication, in the Italian daily La Repubblica and the British Financial Times, from an interview with Maximilian Krah, head of the AfD list in the June 9 election. Latest of the controversies punctuating the campaign of the German far-right party: the MEP maintains that any member of the SS, a paramilitary organization pivotal to Adolf Hitler’s totalitarian project, should not be considered “automatically like a criminal” : “Among the 900,000 SS, there were also many farmers: there was certainly a high percentage of criminals, but not all of them were. »
“The Elephant in the Room”
Far from fearing the consequences that the RN could draw from the provocations and legal proceedings in which his movement is stuck, Mr. Krah took advantage of the interview at La Repubblica to challenge his French partner: “If we are kicked out, I doubt they will reach the number of seven countries required to form a group.” Tired of explaining itself to each AfD controversy, the former National Front therefore takes the risk of long negotiations in Brussels and Strasbourg, and that of having to constitute a group of a reduced size, deprived of representatives of the largest European countries. As Marine Le Pen herself said World in December 2023, “it’s difficult to envisage a European strategy that ignores the Germans. “It’s the elephant in the room.”
The “European strategy” is, however, the least of the concerns of a party which only looks towards 2027 and has never really invested in European democracy. To preserve the image of the RN, the separation between the two partners seemed inevitable. The AfD has continued to experience in recent months the “co-ownership” staged by Marine Le Pen to justify her links with parties with claimed radicalism.
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