Carmen Valero Berlin
Berlin
Updated Monday, January 22, 2024-19:57
Politics Germany mobilizes against the extreme right: "We have learned from the past"
Global playground The mysterious attempted attacks against the leaders of the German extreme right
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) will push for a Brexit-style referendum on the country's membership in the European Union if it comes to power and fails to reform it from within to eliminate its
democratic deficit
and return more sovereignty to the member states.
With these statements to the
Financial Times
newspaper about a hypothetical
Dexit
, AfD co-president Alice Weidel reverses what was agreed at the AfD European Party conference held in Magdeburg in the summer of 2023. There no one spoke of a
Dexit
, but that "the EU cannot be reformed and we consider it a failed project. We will fight for a
Confederation of European Nations
, a newly founded European economic and community of interests in which the sovereignty of the Member States is preserved."
The reaction in Germany to Weidel's statements has not been long in coming.
Economists see the AfD's mind games as a warning sign.
"A
Dexit
would be
the end of the German economic model
and would destroy millions of good jobs in the country," declared
Marcel Fratzscher
, president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).
"The result would be a sharp rise in unemployment, far above the level that Germany experienced 20 years ago as
the sick man of Europe
."
Along the same lines,
Katja Mast
, parliamentary secretary of the Social Democratic parliamentary group (SPD) stated that "a
Dexit
is
a stupid idea
, but the AfD has many of them."
Weidel's party is "the biggest threat to localization and employment in Germany," she stressed.
For
Katarina Barley
, head of the SPD list for the European elections, "the AfD plan is a dwarfing of Germany," and a nod to Russian President
Vladimir Putin
.
"Putin wants nothing more than an EU that breaks up."
Electoral rise
The AfD goes where the wind blows and discontent with the established parties has pushed it up to 22% in the polls.
Although it is very far from the absolute majority and the
cordon sanitaire
imposed on this formation by the rest of the political forces is far from being lifted to facilitate a coalition.
Even so, Weidel once again positions himself with a hypothetical
Dexit
against the majority parties, devoutly pro-European.
He does not even open the possibility of a referendum at the federal level, since the Basic Law only contemplates them if it involves a reorganization of the federated states.
To call a referendum of another kind, the Magna Carta would first have to be modified with a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.
In his interview with the British newspaper, Weidel praised the United Kingdom's departure from the bloc, calling it "totally correct" and a
"model for Germany
. "
Co-chair of the AfD since 2022, Weidel stated that an AfD government would seek to reform the EU and eliminate its "democratic deficit", curbing the powers of the "bureaucratized" European Commission, an
"unelected Executive"
.
But if reform is not possible, "if we fail to rebuild the sovereignty of EU member states, we should let the people decide, as Britain did," she said.
With the idea of
Dexit
, AfD returns to its fundamental convictions.
Despite all the leadership changes, splits and congresses, this party, founded in 2013 by conservative economists angry about the Eurozone bailouts during the sovereign debt crisis, has remained
eurosceptic
and
anti-European
.
And that is the face that will be shown in the European elections next June.
It is not expected that the AfD will substantially improve its positions in the European Parliament in the June elections
with its proposals
, but it will serve to warm up the campaign in the crucial September elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia.
The AfD does not govern in any of Germany's 16 state governments and Weidel herself has acknowledged on several occasions that her party would not come to power in Berlin "before 2029."
She insisted that a future AfD role in the government is "inevitable", predicting that the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) would be the first to abandon their boycott.
"The CDU will not be able to maintain its
firewall
in the long term," she said of the party once led by
Angela Merkel
.