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LE PEN

‘Europe will wake up in 2017’, Le Pen says in Germany

French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen on Saturday told a European gathering of right-wing populists in Germany that a string of high-stakes elections in 2017 would blow a wind of change across the region.

Published: 21 January 2017 13:49 CET
'Europe will wake up in 2017', Le Pen says in Germany
Marine Le Pen giviong her speech in Koblenz. Photo: Roberto Pfeil/AFP
Emboldened by the Brexit vote and Donald Trump's US presidential victory, the far-right National Front leader said voters in France, Germany and the Netherlands would be next to reject the status quo.
 
“2016 was the year the Anglo-Saxon world woke up. 2017, I am sure, the people of continental Europe will wake up,” she told a cheering crowd at a conference hall in the western river city of Koblenz, on the river Rhine.
   
“It's no longer a question of if, but when,” she added in a speech that railed against migration, the euro and open borders.
   
Billed as a “European counter-summit”, the Koblenz gathering is also being attended by Frauke Petry of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders of the Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party, Harald Vilimsky, secretary general of the Freedom Party of Austria and Matteo Salvini of Italy's anti-EU Northern League.
   
The conference comes just a day after the US inauguration of Trump, who assumed power with a staunchly nationalist address in which he vowed to put “America first”.
 
The Koblenz participants have repeatedly voiced their admiration for the maverick billionaire, and like him are hoping to shake up the political landscape by capitalising on a tide of anger against the establishment and anxiety over migration.
   
“Yesterday a new America, today Koblenz and tomorrow a new Europe,” Wilders told the 800-strong crowd in German, to loud applause. “We are the start of a patriotic spring in Europe.” 
   
The charismatic Dutch MP currently tops polls ahead of March parliamentary elections but observers say he is likely to struggle to find the coalition partners needed to govern.
   
The Koblenz congress has been organised by the European Parliament's Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) grouping, which was set up by Le Pen in 2015 and is now home to 40 MEPs from nine member states.
   
It has been touted as a chance for the parties to highlight their common ground but political analyst Timo Lochocki of the German Marshall Fund said the event was mainly “just good PR” as the parties had little to gain from
strengthening ties.
   
“This is largely to increase media attention,” he told AFP. “The reasons why people vote for these parties are purely national and are independent from any alleged cross-national cooperation between the far-right.”
   
The meeting of some of Europe's most divisive politicians has stirred controversy in Germany.
   
Authorities in Koblenz are bracing for a large protest later on Saturday by a coalition of left-wing groups, mainstream political parties and unions. More than 1,000 police officers have been deployed to keep the demos
peaceful.
   
Gathering under the banner “Koblenz stays colourful — No room for right-wing populism”, the demonstrators say they plan to play a rendition of Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”, the EU's anthem, outside the conference venue.
   
German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel of the Social Democrats is expected to join the protesters, while Luxembourg's foreign minister Jean Asselborn is scheduled to address the crowd.
   
Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out meeting Le Pen ahead of the French polls, with her spokesman saying the French far-right politician's policies have nothing in common with those of the German government. Le Pen hit back at the perceived snub on Twitter.
   
“I am going to Germany to meet its future, the AfD, not its past, the CDU,” she wrote, referring to Merkel's conservative party.
 
In the run-up to the congress, AfD MEP Marcus Pretzell, Petry's husband, triggered widespread criticism when he announced that several German media outlets had been denied accreditation because of their perceived bias.
   
He said those barred “can watch the livestream”. AfD co-chief Petry meanwhile has come under fire for taking part in the meeting at all, with some prominent AfD members questioning whether the party should be cosying up to Le Pen, and in doing so, lurching further to the right.
   
The AfD started out as an anti-euro party but has since gained ground by railing against Merkel's liberal refugee policy, which has brought over a million asylum seekers to the country since 2015.
   
It is polling at between 11-15 percent, ahead of a general election in September, boosting its chances of becoming the first hardline rightist party to enter Germany's parliament since 1945.

ELECTIONS

Germany’s far-right AfD ahead in regional poll with anti-shutdown stance

Best known as an anti-migrant party, Germany's far-right AfD has seized on the coronavirus pandemic to court a new type of voter ahead of regional elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday: anti-shutdown activists.

Published: 2 June 2021 11:05 CEST
Germany's far-right AfD ahead in regional poll with anti-shutdown stance
Björn Höcke, party chairman in Thuringia, at an election event in Merseburg, Saxony-Anhalt on May 29th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Sebastian Willnow

“Sending so many people into poverty with so few infections is problematic for us,” is how Oliver Kirchner, the AfD’s top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, views the measures ordered by the government to halt Covid-19 transmission.

The anti-shutdown stance seems to be paying off in the former East German state. The party is riding high in the polls and even stands a chance of winning a regional election for the first time.

READ ALSO: Germany’s far-right AfD chooses hardline team ahead of national elections

Surveys have the AfD neck-and-neck with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, with the Bild daily even predicting victory for the far-right party on 26 percent, ahead of the CDU on 25 percent.

In Saxony-Anhalt’s last election in 2016, the CDU was the biggest party, scoring 30 percent and forming a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens.

But the CDU has taken a hammering in the opinion polls in recent months, with voters unhappy with the government’s pandemic management and a corruption scandal involving shady coronavirus mask contracts.

Social deprivation

A victory for the AfD would spell a huge upset for the conservatives just four months ahead of a general election in Germany — the first in 16 years not to feature Merkel.

They started out campaigning against the euro currency in 2013. Then in 2015 they capitalised on public anger over Merkel’s 2015 decision to let in a wave of asylum seekers from conflict-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The party caused a sensation in Germany’s last general election in 2017 when it secured almost 13 percent of the vote, entering parliament for the first time as the largest opposition party.

Troubled by internal divisions and accusations of ties to neo-Nazi fringe groups, the party has more recently seen its support at the national level stagnate at between 10 and 12 percent.

READ ALSO: Germany’s far-right AfD investigated over election ties

The party is also controversial in Saxony-Anhalt itself. In state capital Magdeburg, posters showing local candidate Hagen Kohl have been defaced with Hitler moustaches and the words “Never again”.

For wine merchant Jan Buhmann, 57, victory for the far-right party would be a “disaster”.

“The pandemic has shown that we need new ideas. We need young people, we need dynamism in the state. For me, the AfD does not stand for that,” he said.

Yet the AfD’s core supporters have largely remained unwavering in the former East German states.

For pensioner Hans-Joachim Peters, 73, the AfD is “the only party that actually tells it like it is”.

Politicians should “think less about Europe and more about Germany”, he told AFP in Magdeburg. AfD campaigners there were handing out flyers calling for “resistance” and “an end to all anti-constitutional restrictions on our liberties”.

Political scientist Hajo Funke of Berlin’s Free University puts the AfD’s core strength in eastern Germany down to “social deprivation and frustration” resulting from problems with reunification.

The party’s latest anti-corona restrictions stance has also helped it play up its anti-establishment credentials, adding some voters to its core base, he said.

Other east German states in which the AfD has a stronghold, such as Saxony and Thuringia, continue to have the highest 7-day incidences per 100,000 residents in the country. Saxony-Anhalt’s 7-day incidence, however, currently is below the national average (31.3) as of Wednesday June 3rd.

READ ALSO: Why are coronavirus figures so high in German regions with far-right leanings?

Hijab snub

Funke predicted the AfD would attract broadly the same voters in
Saxony-Anhalt as it did in 2016, when it won 24 percent of the vote.

“Some have dropped off because the party is too radical, some radicals who didn’t vote are now voting and some of those who are anti-corona are also voting for the AfD,” he said.

The Sachsen-Anhalt-Monitor 2020 report, commissioned by the local government, found that the main concern for voters in the region was the economic fallout from the pandemic. But the AfD’s core selling point — immigration and refugees — was number two on their list.

According to AfD candidate Kirchner, many people in Saxony-Anhalt still view the influx of refugees to Germany “very critically”.

“And I think they are right,” he said at a campaign stand in Magdeburg decked in the AfD’s signature blue. “Who is going to rebuild Syria? Who is going to do that if everyone comes here?”

When a young woman wearing a hijab walked past the stand, no one attempted to hand her a flyer.

By Femke Colborne

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