-Analysis-
PARIS — You’d have thought that Eurosceptic forces had been inoculated by the failure of Brexit. After all, in a recent poll, only 22% of British people consider their country to be better off since leaving the European Union three years ago, with only 10% considering their own personal situation to be better.
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Yet here’s Alice Weidel, chairwoman of Alternativ für Deutschland, the far-right AfD, praising Brexit in an interview published Monday in the Financial Times ; and suggesting that if her party comes to power, it could hold a referendum on “Dexit,” the prospect of Germany (Deutschland) exiting the EU.
Jus a few years ago, the AFD was a fringe group with neo-Nazi tendencies, and its views on the future of Europe had little impact. But the party has been rising sharply in the opinion polls, prompting a million and a half Germans to march in protest this past weekend in the country’s major cities, after the revelation of a secret AFD plan for “re-migration,” the mass expulsion of foreigners from Germany.
What the AFD says and thinks has become a national issue for Germany, and therefore for Europe too.
Scant “Dexit” support
In her controversial interview, Weidel says that the British were right to leave the European Union, and that this is a “model” for Germany. She indicates that if she were to become Prime Minister, she would try to reduce the powers of the European Commission and what she describes as its “democratic deficit.” If this proves impossible, she proposes a referendum on “Dexit.”
The most astonishing thing about this stance is that it runs counter to all German opinion polls. The Eurobarometer, which regularly surveys opinion in European countries, shows German attachment to European integration to be stronger than the continental average, even stronger than in France, for example.
AFD cultivates a posture of rupture with the rest of the political class
In the latest Eurobarometer, only 18% of Germans have a negative image of the European Union. This suggests that a majority would not vote for a “Dexit” today.
Like all far-right forces, the AFD cultivates a posture of rupture with the rest of the political class, which in Germany is unanimously pro-European. This would not enable it to win elections, but to federate various forms of discontent, such as the current farmers movement, beyond its strongholds in the former East Germany.
Far right moderating
But what’s more interesting is how the other far-right parties in Europe are positioned vis a vis the EU. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni has found no other solution to the immigration problem than to turn to the bloc, and has not broken with the European position on aid to Ukraine.
In France, the Rassemblement National, which sits alongside the AFD in the European Parliament, has tempered its hostility to the EU compared with the days when Marine Le Pen advocated leaving the euro.
With the far right hoping to make headway in the European elections in June, the AFD’s position invites us to consider what these parties really want for the future of Europe. And, perhaps also, to ask the British one more time what they really think of how “Brexit” worked out for them.
