Far-right AfD could join Patriots for Europe group after German elections
“It will be interesting to see its electoral score next Sunday,” said an MEP from France’s Rassemblement National.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could join the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament after Germany’s federal elections on February 23.
Several sources confirmed to Euronews that the idea is making the rounds within the group but that there is currently no schedule for talks.
Patriots for Europe (PfE) is now the third-largest group in the Parliament, with 86 MEPs from 13 EU Member States, including some from France’s Rassemblement National, Italy’s Lega, and Hungary’s Fidesz.
One of its main figures, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, endorsed the party when he met AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel in Budapest last week.
“It’s completely clear that the AfD is the future,” Orbán said then, highlighting convergences with his PfE-affiliated Fidesz party especially on migration policy.
As Orbán and other leaders emphasized during a Patriots’ gathering last week in Madrid, the group’s plan is to unite all like-minded parties across Europe, win national elections, and increase their presence in EU governments—to ultimately become “the new normal in Brussels.”
“There is a clear and unstoppable path to unity among conservative, patriotic, and sovereignist forces,” Spanish Patriots MEP Hermann Tertsch told Euronews. “Even if nobody can predict when this will happen, things are moving much faster than before.”
“Many of the reservations [within Patriots about AfD’s entry] no longer exist,” he added, because there is “a very positive process inside the party.”
Another hint for possible future cooperation came from Strasbourg last week where the heads of the AfD and Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) delegations said they would present a “new initiative” in a joint press conference only to cancel the event at the last minute.
In the previous parliamentary term, AfD was part of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, alongside many of the now PfE parties, such as Lega, Rassemblement National (RN), and FPÖ.
