AfD’s leading candidate for European elections steps back after nazi controversy

Brussels – Maximilian Krah, the leading candidate of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) for the European elections, has resigned from the leadership of the German far-right party.    Following his aide’s recent involvement in an espionage case on behalf of China, Krah’s words in an interview with La Repubblica, in which he asserted that the Nazi SS “were not all criminals,” proved fatal.

A perfect storm has been brewing for months for Krah, whose name is also among the MEPs interviewed by the pro-Russian newspaper The Voice of Europe, recently banned by the European Commission in all 27 member countries. Immediately dumped by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Rassemblement National (RN)—with whom AfD sits in the Euro Chamber, in the eurosceptic Identity and Democracy group—Krah decided to step back to patch up the unfortunate remark and safeguard the election projections, which predict an exploit for the German far-right.

His renunciation of AfD leadership does not automatically mean that Krah will not run for a seat in the European Parliament in the upcoming June 6-9 elections. The renunciation was not announced without controversy: “My remarks were misused as a pretext to damage our party,” said the German MEP.

“The last thing we need right now is a debate about me. The AfD must maintain its unity. I will therefore refrain from further campaign appearances with immediate effect and resign as a member of the Federal Executive Committee,” Krah wrote in a post on X. Still, the damage may already be irreparable: Le Pen, who for years has sought to normalize the French far-right and secure her place in the transalpine institutional space, has announced that her RN will no longer sit in the same European parliamentary group as the German party after the June elections. “It was urgent to establish a cordon sanitaire,” she said on the French radio: “The AfD goes from provocation to provocation. Now is no longer the time to distance ourselves: it is time to make a clean break with this movement.”

Even Anders Vistisen, the leading candidate of the Danish far-right party and Spitzenkandidat for the presidency of the European Commission for the Identity and Democracy group, left no room for mending the rift: “Maximilian Krah of the AfD has shown by his statements and actions that he does not belong to the ID group,” he said in a post on X. In the ID group, which in the current legislature has 59 MEPs in Brussels, the largest party is Matteo Salvini’s Lega, with 22 elected members, followed precisely by Rassemblement National with 18 MEPs and AfD with nine elected members. The Lega, of which ID President Marco Zanni is also a member, could not help but emphasize the “full harmony” between Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen.