Political scientist Dr Antonios Souris says part of the AfD’s success can be attributed to their successful social media campaign.
Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) top European candidate Maximilian Krah has been ousted from the newly elected European Parliament delegation, which is now to be lead by Rene Aust.
Krah has been excluded as the AfD seeks to rejoin the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in Brussels, after Marine Le Pen suggested expelling the AfD for being ‘too extreme.’
During the press conference in Berlin, co-chairperson of AfD Alice Weidel urged the German government to call a snap election.
“People want us to take on governmental responsibility,” she told journalists at a conference announcing Aust’s new position.
Weidel said that the Greens have reached their end. “People have realised what it means when the Greens are in government. They ruin everything. They ruin the foundations. They are not a liberal party, they are a party of prohibitions,” she added.
Co-leader Tino Chrupalla said voters wanted to see nuclear energy return to Germany and to be able to continue to drive combustion engine cars.
Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) emerged as the winning party on Sunday night but the AfD performed particularly well amongst young voters.
Political scientist Dr Antonios Souris says part of the AfD’s success can be attributed to their successful social media campaign, but said the three governing parties should stop trying to compete with each other.
He also urged the parties to “think about policy solutions to problems,” and said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz needs to start explaining policies to the public.
Dr Souris said the results also showed some positive signs and praised the record breaking voter turn out, at 65%. Around 65 million people living in Germany were eligible to vote.
“For Germany, there were some very interesting developments. You could see that you have a strong democratic opposition party with the CDU, CSU, which is always a good sign for democracy,” he said, although he also said there have been some “worrisome developments” regarding “huge regional differences in right wing voting”.
Despite the Social Democrats’ historic defeat at the European elections, Scholz has ruled out calling an early snap election. Weidel said the party has set its sights on becoming the new ruling government at the 2025 federal elections next year.
