BRUSSELS – With Europe’s far right poised to make big gains in next month’s European elections, a feud between its two most powerful parties risks spoiling the victory parade before the champagne is even popped.
This week, a long-standing feud between the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally broke out in France. Le Pen’s party is at the top of the polls in France, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron, while the AfD is second in Germany. Together, they could re-appoint about fifty representatives in the next Parliament and form a nationalist and anti-immigration political team.
But, at least for now, Le Pen wants to keep the Germans away. His front-runner’s campaign manager, Jordan Bardella, said AfD front-runner Maximilian Krah’s comments about the Nazis went too far in suggesting that SS members were not necessarily war criminals.
The National Assembly now insists it can no longer sit alongside the AfD within its Identity and Democracy faction in the European Parliament. As if the Nazi comments weren’t enough, German authorities last month charged one of Krah’s parliamentary aides with spying for Beijing, and the AfD candidate was implicated in an influence-peddling scandal involving a pro-Russian propaganda outlet. While the National Assembly is advancing in the polls, the AfD is on the wane.
The French were also angered by the far-right conference attended by AfD officials who talked about the “re-immigration” of millions of people from Germany, and the mockery of AfD representatives due to the status of the legal office of the French overseas department of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean.
The inability of the National Assembly and the AfD to work as a group could be significant. EU MEPs are elected at national level, but then form international alliances to have more influence in the European Parliament, which shapes EU laws and spending. Other elements of the ID group, such as Matteo Salvini’s League and Anders Vistisen of the Danish People’s Party, have also gone out of their way to call for the AfD to be excluded.
Even if the AfD is not officially expelled from ID, it could simply be left out when the group is reconstituted after the election, one ID official suggested.
These are the big questions as the EU enters a heated campaign period ahead of the June 6-9 elections.
In a way, the tensions are not new: the European far-right is already divided on the European scene, divided between three different camps in the European Parliament: a far-right camp made up of Eurosceptics and nationalists that includes the Brothers of Italy and Poland’s Giorgia Meloni. Pravda, the far-right group ID, then the battalion of European representatives of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, alone and left behind.
The French and Germans in the ID group have been led by Matteo Salvini’s League party since 2019. ID expects to swell its ranks in the next parliament thanks to an influx of MEPs from the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Vlaams Belang in Flanders and Chege in Portugal – but the French and Germans (if readmitted) will still be by far the best largest bloc within it.
In any case, the German far right and the French far right are not historical partners in the European Parliament. The AfD has only held a seat in the French National Assembly since 2019, and only joined its pan-European umbrella party last year.
More broadly, the far-right is also divided on policy, undermining its effectiveness: Russia’s war in Ukraine is a divisive issue, as is the way it deals with China.
The centre-right – including, it appears, current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – believes that parts of the ECR group – mainly Melona’s MEPs – could be tempted to move away from the most extreme elements of their group to work with pro-European forces .
There are choices.
Furthermore, the AfD and the National Assembly have been following different paths for years. As the AfD becomes radicalized with pro-Russian rhetoric and even alienates some of its current MEPs who are deeply unhappy with the party’s direction, Le Pen has embarked on a crusade to present her party as respectable, non-threatening and ready to govern France. No wonder: she will probably run again for the French presidency in 2027.
While it would certainly weaken the IS group in the European Parliament numerically, cutting ties with far-right Germans in Brussels would be a good thing at home and would remove a stick that Macron – or his front-runner Valérie Hayer – can use to beat her.
At the next convocation of the Parliament, if the polls are to be believed, a shift to the right is expected.
However, the lines between ECR and ID are already blurred, making it difficult for even the most experienced parliamentary observers to understand why certain parties belong to different camps. For example, recently Éric Zemmour’s far-right Reconquête party (led by Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal) announced that one of its MPs was joining the ECR group.
Viktor Orbán also follows the ECR group, expressing his enthusiasm to join it.
So even if Le Pen can score domestic political points by saying she won’t join the AfD, she can still be sure that hard-right groups can help her vote for politicians who represent her interests in Brussels.
Not having a club of representatives (currently there are seven of them) means that you do not have access to millions of euros of funding from the EU budget, nor the same time to speak at the plenary session of the Parliament, nor the same prestige of belonging to one of the institution’s political family.
Chances are that one of the ID parties will be expelled from the so-called of the unregistered part of the Parliament will not change much because it is an informal vote sanitary cordon This already prevents the AfD and ID parties from putting pen to paper on legislative work or chairing a committee. Their amendments to the law are automatically ignored by other members of the Parliament.
The ECR and ID groups already tried to merge a few years ago – but without success.
While on paper Germany’s exit might seem like it would only produce further fragmentation and chaos within the far-right in parliament, some believe it could pave the way for deepening cooperation or even a merger between the ID and ECR groups.
“Now a more fundamental change is possible, and Le Pen is using it to advocate a merger with Meloni, Orbán, Wilders & Co. towards a united far right, without the most radical part,” wrote Nicolai von Ondarza, a politician. scientist at SWP Europe, at X (formerly Twitter).
However, the prospect of a far-right group – which could actually have consequences for Europe’s political agenda – becoming a second force in Parliament often comes up before European elections and has been dismissed by MEP Giorgio Meloni.