“The rise of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is causing widespread alarm, including in unexpected quarters – other far-right European parties. While the German party is winning record levels of support at home, some of its closest ideological allies elsewhere in Europe are keeping it at arm’s length. That tension was again on display after”, — write on: www.cnn.com
The rise of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is causing widespread alarm, including in unexpected quarters – other far-right European parties.
While the German party is winning record levels of support at home, some of its closest ideological allies elsewhere in Europe are keeping it at arm’s length.
That tension was again on display after Germany’s recent state elections. In the state of Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month, the AfD made historic gains when it won 43.8% of the vote, falling just three seats short of an outright majority. Elections in Mecklenburg- Vorpommern and Berlin last weekend also showed a exodus from mainstream parties to the fringes, notably the AfD.
Several of the bloc’s far-right party leaders have offered their congratulations, including Geert Wilder of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, Viktor Orbàn of Hungary’s Fidesz and Santiago Abascal of Spain’s Vox, who hailed the AfD’s advance as “a “great hope for Germany and Europe.”
But some of Europe’s biggest far-right parties – including in France, Italy and Britain – have been silent.
France’s National Rally (RN), once one of the AfD’s closest partners, said even before the Saxony-Anhalt vote that renewed cooperation with the AfD was “not planned.”
For party leader Marine Le Pen, there is a domestic calculation in play as well as an ideological one.
Under her leadership, the National Rally has embraced what it calls “detoxification”, shifting the party away from the overt xenophobia of its roots under her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, toward the political mainstream.
She has also worked to move the party’s brand away from the stain of two of its founders’ Nazi past. Its anti-immigration rhetoric is softer, its doors open to mixed-race citizens that her father’s generation might not have welcomed as the “right kind” of French. Since Hamas’ October 7 attacks against Israel, she’s made condemning antisemitism a powerful arm in her rebranding.
The RN, in its previous guise as the National Front, had long been a collaborator with the AfD in the European Parliament. But comments from a senior AfD figure talking down the criminal role of Hitler’s SS paramilitary group in World War II as well as the emergence of a secret plan by the German party to expel people of foreign origin en masse crossed the RN’s red lines. An alliance with the AfD wasn’t compatible with the RN’s new image. In May 2024, the French party broke ranks and ties with the German far right.
The split was evident following the AfD’s recent successes, with the RN’s top leadership notably silent. With the 2027 presidential election on the horizon – Marine Le Pen’s best chance yet to win the Elysée Palace – that’s likely a strategy to avoid any negative blowback.
“We have real problems on both style and substance. We do not consider them to be our allies in Germany,” RN lawmaker Franck Allisio told television channel LCI on September 6, the day of the Saxony-Anhalt vote.
In comparison to the RN, the AfD has made no effort to purge itself of its extremist factions despite now also appealing to a wide range of voters, said Grégoire Roos, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programs at the Chatham House think tank. The AfD has rejected accusations of right-wing extremism, with the party’s co-leaders previously describing Germany’s domestic intelligence agency’s classification of it as “extremist” as an attempt to “distort democratic competition.”
“Unlike the National Rally that has worked extremely hard to wipe out any morally disturbing elements… the AfD hasn’t conducted such a clean-up,” Roos told CNN.
Figures within the AfD are also comfortable talking about the Nazi era as though not everything from that period of history should be “thrown in the garbage,” another aspect which makes the party unpalatable to most of its European peers, Roos said.
The more radical far-right French party of Éric Zemmour, Reconquest, however, welcomed the AfD’s win in Saxony-Anhalt. Leading Reconquest MEP Sarah Knafo called the results “historic” in an election night X post. “The European peoples have shown a great deal of patience. Today, they want to take their destiny back into their own hands. An entire continent is rising up,” she said.
In this vein, the AfD is not completely alone. It helped create the Europe of Sovereign Nations group in the European Parliament after its expulsion from Identity and Democracy. The smaller, more isolated group includes nationalist parties such as Reconquest, as well as Bulgaria’s Revival, Hungary’s Our Homeland Movement, Poland’s New Hope and Slovakia’s Republic Movement.
The far-right Brothers of Italy has also not embraced the AfD, with party leader Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, instead pursuing a strategy of building influence within Europe’s political mainstream.
Her party sits in the European Conservatives and Reformists group, which is more integrated into the European Parliament’s institutional mainstream than the AfD’s Europe of Sovereign Nations grouping. The two parties have deep foreign policy disagreements, with Meloni’s party supporting NATO and Ukraine, while the AfD advocates against sending weapons to Ukraine and wants to lift sanctions on Russia. Meloni has called these differences “irreconcilable.”
Nigel Farage, who spearheads Britain’s hard-right Reform UK party, has described the AfD as a “mixed bag.”
Asked on a podcast with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in April what his party’s main differences with the AfD are, Farage said, “I think the pro-Putin stuff, I find it hard to understand.” The AfD’s ties to some dictators were “very, very difficult,” he added.
The AfD’s foreign policy positions have made it an awkward partner for many.
The party contains competing currents over Germany’s relationship with Russia and the US, while its support for closer relations with Moscow separates it from other European right-wing parties. It has also adopted a strong anti-aid rhetoric regarding Ukraine, setting it apart from some, although not all, of Europe’s populist parties.
The party is “very much radical when it comes to Ukraine and Russia,” Roos believes. “Listening to the AfD, you would almost feel like Russia has not invaded Ukraine, that Russia is not committing crimes every single day in Ukraine or killing civilians.” Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of targeting civilians in Ukraine.
Additionally, parties such as France’s RN have made efforts to disassociate themselves from foreign powers such as Russia and China, while the AfD has not. Last year, the AfD’s links to Beijing were thrust into the spotlight when a former top party aide was convicted in Germany of spying for China.
The AfD has also courted support in Washington. President Donald Trump took to social media to congratulate the party on its landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt, ending his message with a German variant of his Make America Great Again acronym, “MGGA!”
Elon Musk, who has championed the AfD for years, also expressed his delight.
The AfD has maintained a “strong association with Trump and the MAGA movement, which in France, like many European countries, has become increasingly unpopular,” Roos said.
Hypothetically, if the AfD were to make significant regional gains in Germany, it would likely push for a strong nationalist agenda as well as for strengthening relations with Moscow and the lifting of Russian oil and gas sanctions at the European level, Roos said. He pointed out, though, that German foreign policy is vested in the Chancellor’s office, which may limit sudden shifts even if regional support for the AfD’s positions grows.
He added that German democracy remains solid due to its independent judiciary and constitutional court, designed to keep political power in check.
The AfD’s growing strength presents Europe’s far right with a dilemma. If the party continues to gain popularity in Germany, ignoring it could become more complicated. But embracing it could carry political costs for far-right parties that want to demonstrate that they can move from the political margins into government.