Clash Between Right Wing Allies

With just a few months to go before the European elections, the French Rassemblement National party and the German Alternative für Deutschland party, allies in the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group, are locked in controversy over the thorny issue of ‘remigration.’ Marine Le Pen, vigorously opposed to the remigration allegedly envisaged by representatives of the German party, said she was ready to distance herself from her former ally. Talks are underway to try to find possible common ground. 

The controversy began with an informal meeting of AfD leaders and other German politicians in November in Potsdam, described by the state-affiliated investigative network Correctiv—and echoed by mainstream media but disputed by AfD—as having discussed a National Socialist plan for the mass expulsion from the country of foreigners. The meeting, according to Correctiv, also purportedly considered deportation of ‘non-assimilated’ German citizens—a controversial concept known as ‘remigration’ and advocated by several nationalist parties in Europe. 

In France, remigration is regularly discussed by Reconquête, the rival party of the Rassemblement National led by Éric Zemmour. But remigration is a non-negotiable point for Marine Le Pen, who said, “I completely disagree with the proposal that would have been discussed or would have been decided within the framework of this meeting,” apparently commenting on media reports rather than direct communication with her German ally. Le Pen was keen to distance herself from the AfD, communicating directly on the issue without worrying about a possible speech by Jordan Bardella, the party’s current president and the Rassemblement National’s head of list candidate for the European elections. “We have never defended any kind of ‘remigration,’ in the sense that we would take away French nationality from people who have acquired it,” she stated emphatically. 

At a press conference on January 25th, Le Pen sent a very clear message of disapproval of the substance, and of a possible strategic change for her party at a time when several joint campaign meetings between the Rassemblement national and the AfD are already scheduled for the coming weeks. “We will have to discuss together differences as important as these and see whether or not these differences have consequences for our ability to ally ourselves in the same group,” she explained to journalists in Paris.

Why was Marine Le Pen so quick to respond? 

The AfD party is currently at the centre of a controversy in Germany, with media and establishment parties mobilising public opinion against ‘the danger of the far Right.’ Demonstrations have taken place in a dozen towns to protest against a movement whose results in the forthcoming elections are predicted by a large number of opinion polls to be on the rise. The opportunity provided by the broadcasting of the AfD’s alleged ‘remigration plan’ is too good to pass up and offers a perfect pretext for the AfD’s opponents to revive memories of the Nazi era in Germany. To them, the Potsdam gathering has the air of a new Wannsee conference. A section of the German press was quick to draw parallels between the AfD’s proposals and the successive remigration plans devised by the NSDAP for Jews in the 1930s. “For the silent majority, the revelation of the mass expulsion plan has had the effect of an electroshock,” explains Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin.

A return to controversy about the Second World War is precisely what Marine Le Pen is trying to avoid at all costs, as she has been fighting for years to erase from French public opinion the memory of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s thunderous statements about the German occupation or the gas chambers. Hence the knee-jerk reaction to the remarks made at a meeting that was also attended by members of the right wing of the CDU, the centre-right governing party to which former Chancellor Angela Merkel belonged. 

Some on the national Right in France are criticising the former presidential candidate for a disproportionate and unnecessary reaction at a time when her party is very high in the polls. Sending the signal of a possible break with the AfD could weaken the Rassemblement National, which has no interest in going it alone in the European Parliament if it goes so far as to end all collaboration with the AfD within the Identity and Democracy group. So what would the Rassemblement National’s European strategy be? Push the AfD to leave the group or leave themselves? The Rassemblement National could then find itself isolated, insofar as it has never expressed any wish to join the ECR group, where, if they manage to get elected, the members of the Reconquête party who are candidates in the June 2024 European elections would sit. A more measured distancing would probably have been more appropriate.

Once the moral distance has been established, it is time for negotiations. On Monday, January 29th, the German party announced that it would be holding necessary talks with Marine Le Pen. The talks should aim to “rectify reality,” according to the AfD, which believes it is the victim of a media cabal. “We consider this to be a misunderstanding that we hope to clarify soon,” a spokesperson for the German party told AFP on Monday. The AfD regrets that Marine Le Pen’s statements were made “on the basis of press reports” which, in its view, were “entirely false in tone.” According to AfD MP Bernd Baumann, the terms ‘deportation’ and ‘mass expulsion’ were not used at the meeting, but were reconstructed by Correctiv, the state-supported media outlet behind the revelations, in a bid to destroy the AfD’s position, and then picked up by the rest of the German press.

In November, at a meeting in Lisbon of the European parties of the national right in the Identity and Democracy group, Marine Le Pen described the group as “a condominium,” with “rules of procedure that are major political ideas,” but where “everyone has their own flat decorated as you wish.” Since then, the tone has changed and there is growing concern within the Rassemblement National, although the split is not yet complete. Marine Le Pen, according to comments reported by Les Échos, does not want “to spend the election campaign reacting to what the AfD says or does.” She is nonetheless warning her German partner: “Alliances will be determined after the elections,” she reiterated.