The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)’s chief candidate for European elections, Joerg Meuthen, expects big gains for nationalist parties but thinks they will have trouble forming a united front to advance an agenda.
Meuthen, one of two leaders of the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam AfD, said diverging interests and clashing personalities would likely prevent a “patriotic alliance” forming in the European Parliament after the May polls.
“I expect that conservative forces will be clearly strengthened in the elections and that social democratic forces… will be heavily weakened,” Meuthen told AFP.
He said the expected strong gains of the “patriotic parties” of the right would allow them to block certain measures advanced by the conservative European People’s Party, which currently has a majority.
To do that, however, would require far-right, right-wing populist and right-wing nationalist parties to “work together because they can’t do anything as individual parties”, said Meuthen, 57.
The AfD, along with Italy’s hard-right League party — which is planning a meeting of like-minded group Monday — and Austria’s Freedom Party (FPOe), saw its support surge during the 2015-16 migrant influx.
In Germany, the party has railed against Chancellor Angela Merkel for allowing in more than one million asylum seekers fleeing war and poverty.
The AfD won its first seats in the German parliament in 2017 with nearly 13 percent of the vote, and is now represented in all 16 state legislatures.
But “even if the AfD wins seats in the (European) Parliament, we can’t do anything on our own. That’s why we need to unite with the others who share our thinking,” Meuthen said.
The AfD, which is presenting its European election campaign programme Saturday, is currently polling at around 10 percent.
In order to throw their weight around on the European stage, far-right parties have got to strike “compromises in the European Parliament and that’s even more complicated because we have 28 different countries with different approaches”, said Meuthen.
The European Parliament still includes Britain as a member state and progress on the complicated Brexit withdrawal procedure will determine whether the country will still need to elect new deputies in May.
Meuthen, an economist by training, stressed that common ground could prove elusive.