The German far-right party Alternative for Germany, (AfD) This Wednesday, it banned its main candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, from attending campaign events, after controversial statements about the Nazi SS.
Krah, head of the Alternative for Germany list in the European Parliament elections to be held from June 6 to 9, announced for his part that he will leave the party’s leading positions.
“The last thing we need now is a debate about me (…). This is why I renounce from today onwards making any appearance in the election campaign and resign from my position as a member of the federal bureau,” Krah wrote in the social network
However, he will remain as the head of the AfD list for the European elections, since it is too late to replace him.
The trigger was some statements to the Italian newspaper The Republic de Krah, who assured that a member of the Nazi SS organization “is not automatically a criminal.”
This prompted France’s main far-right party, the National Rally (RN), to announce that it will no longer share a group with its AfD allies in the European Parliament.
But it is not the first time that Krah has caused controversy. In recent weeks he has been involved in several scandals.
German justice opened a preliminary investigation into suspicions of Russian and Chinese financing. In addition, one of his assistants in the European Parliament was arrested in April, accused of being a Chinese agent.
The AfD is at 15% voting intention for the European elections, relegated to second or third place, after having reached 23% at the end of 2023.
But it remains at a better level than in the 2019 elections, when it obtained 11% of the votes.
The party has a greater number of followers in eastern Germany, while in the west its influence is more contained. Even so, practically the entire country rose up at the beginning of the year to express its rejection of the extreme right.
Voting intention surveys from the infratest dimap institute dated at the beginning of this month predict a clear victory for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the June 9 elections with around 30% of the votes.
But the AfD may remain the second most voted party with 15%, tying with the Greens, but ahead of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) – 14% – and the liberals (4%). In the last European elections, held in 2019, AfD was the fourth most voted party.
