ASCHAFFENBURG: Germany’s new eurosceptic party launched its campaign for the European parliament elections yesterday with an attack on European Union federalism and defence of national sovereignty, in an attempt to regroup after months of perilous infighting.
About 300 delegates in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) gathered at a party congress in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg to elect its candidates for the European vote in May, where fringe parties are expected to do well. “We can only win if we stick together,” AfD leader Bernd Lucke said in his opening speech, comparing his party’s plight to that of David against Goliath. His speech won standing ovations but the congress was interrupted at times by booing and whistling.
The established parties such as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives were too “cowardly” to address Europe’s conflicts and problems, said the economics professor, who was elected lead candidate for the AfD’s European campaign.
In a country with a clear pro-European political consensus, he was careful to say the AfD supported the EU for past achievements such as the creation of a common market. But he condemned “bureaucratic” institutions created in the wake of the euro crisis, such as a euro zone bailout fund and EU banking union, that did not even have a “whiff of democracy, subsidiary and solidarity”.
“Germany must remain a sovereign country, in a union of sovereign states, that is called the European Union but not the United States of Europe,” Lucke said to jubilant applause. Founded less than a year ago by a group of academics and businessmen frustrated by the seemingly endless downward spiral of the euro zone crisis, the AfD originally called for the end of the euro and a return to the
Deutsche Mark.
But the easing of the euro crisis has forced it to scrap that demand — for now. Several delegates told Reuters a return to the mark was unrealistic but they would like to throw struggling states like Greece out of the single currency bloc. REUTERS
