Less than a day after a solid electoral performance for the AfD in EU elections media sources broke the news that its leading candidate Maximillian Krah will not be part of the party’s Brussels delegation after months of public scandal and backroom fighting. The party’s 15-member delegation voted on Monday to exclude the former top name. Eight MEPs voted not to accept Krah, three abstained and four voted against.
During a break in the discussions, before the vote, Krah said an exclusion “would not stop me from continuing to work loudly and successfully for this party in the European Parliament.”
In a social media video posted an hour after the news broke, Krah said that “this approach is wrong” and sent a bad message to the party youth base in particular. The MEP is noted for his prolific use of social media and radical stances on NATO foreign policy.
The decision comes after Krah was consciously excluded from the party’s campaign the past two months.
Krah, who was declared lead candidate by the insurgent populist party at their annual congress last year, has been plagued in recent months by scandals and accusations of extremism—including accusations of relativising the crimes of SS-members during World War II— culminating in the exposure of a parliamentary aide of his operating as an undercover asset for the Chinese government.
Krah’s alleged extremism was cited as a major reason for the AfD’s schism with the French RN weeks before the EU elections with rumours circulating describing the Dresden-based MEP originally sounding out the potential for a new radical faction of nationalist parties after the party was excluded from the right-wing ID group in the EU Parliament.
Speaking anonymously to The European Conservative, AfD officials were not surprised at the news itself but taken back at how quickly Krah had been axed in the aftermath of yesterday’s electoral wins that saw the right-wing party become the second largest German party in the EU Parliament.
