By Sarah Marsh
ESSEN, Germany (Reuters) – Leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany on Saturday reported a surge in membership and vowed to build on its success in the European Parliament election as it targets wins in three state votes in the east this year.
The AfD jumped to second place in nationwide polls last year amid frustration with infighting in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition and worries over sluggish growth in Europe’s largest economy and the war in Ukraine.
While a string of scandals and anti-extremism protests has dampened support in recent months, the nationalist, eurosceptic party nonetheless came second with 15.9% in the European vote this month, ahead the three parties in Scholz’s coalition.
AfD membership had grown by 60% to 46,881 members since January 2023, co-chief Tino Chrupalla told nearly 600 delegates at the party’s convention in the western city of Essen. Some 22,000 people had joined the party while 4,000 had left it.
“Despite all the harassment you have to endure as a member of the AfD, this is an absolutely sensational figure,” Chrupalla told the party convention.
The figure is still a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of members that the big tent parties in Germany, Scholz’s Social Democrats and the opposition conservatives, boast.
The congress was held despite resistance from city authorities – marked by the rainbow and EU flags flying on the flagpoles outside the convention centre – and thousands of protesters who sought to prevent AfD delegates from making it there.
It will run until Sunday, the same day neighbouring France holds the first round of a snap parliamentary election that could bring the far right to power.
“We will not be intimidated,” said co-chief Alice Weidel. “We are here and we are here to stay.”
The AfD is on track to come in first place in elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in September, according to polls, which will likely further complicate governance there as other parties refuse to form a coalition with it.
In discussing the party’s policy platform, Weidel said AfD allies should oppose the disbursal of tax payer money to the “debt states” of Europe and the idea that Ukraine belongs to the European Union, after it opened membership talks this week.
The AfD is on course to form a new political group in the European Parliament – a move which would require 23 MEPs from at least seven EU countries – after being expelled from the Identity and Democracy grouping last month, Weidel said.
The ID expelled the AfD after its lead candidate for the European elections said the Nazi’s Waffen SS were “not all criminals”, a move costing the party both funding and the platform in parliament.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Alison Williams)
