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Simone Baum, “Union of Values” chairwoman in North Rhine-Westphalia

Photo: Malte Ossowski / Sven Simon / IMAGO

The Potsdam meeting of radical right-wingers has further consequences. The city of Cologne has fired an employee who is said to have taken part in the event. A spokesman for the city confirmed that an employee of the city of Cologne was fired in connection with the meeting. The spokesman did not provide any further details.

According to information from the dpa news agency, the terminated employee is the North Rhine-Westphalian chairwoman of the “Union of Values”. As the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” reports, it is Simone Baum. The Green Party group in the city council explained that it was about dismissal without notice. Right-wing extremism is not tolerated in Cologne, not even in the city of Cologne.

The background is the revelations by the media company Correctiv about a meeting of radical right-wingers on November 25th in Potsdam, in which AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative “Values ​​Union” took part. The former head of the “Identitarian Movement” in Austria, Martin Sellner, said he spoke about “remigration” at the meeting. When right-wing extremists use this term, they usually mean that large numbers of people of foreign origin should leave the country - even under duress.

The CDU district association filed a motion to expel Baum from the party

Last week, the Oberberg CDU district association submitted a formal application for expulsion from the party against Baum to the district party court because of her participation in the Potsdam meeting. “People like that have no place with us,” they said.

The “Union of Values” had confirmed the incident and admitted that Baum, who had been a CDU member since 2008, had taken part in the meeting – but not as a delegated representative of the association. "In her statement to the CDU, Simone Baum did not deny attending the meeting in Potsdam," said a spokesman for the "Union of Values" when asked. "But she expressly denied that the 'mass expulsion' claimed in the media or the withdrawal of German citizenship based on ethnic criteria were discussed there or even specifically planned."

col/dpa