criminal proceedings initiated
The EU Parliament revokes the immunity of ex-AfD leader Jörg Meuthen
Prof. Dr. Jörg Meuthen left the AFD on February 10 and resigned as party leader
© Matthias Schrader / Picture Alliance
At the request of the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, the EU Parliament has withdrawn Jörg Meuthen’s MP immunity. Criminal proceedings are to be initiated against the former AFD boss because of his former party’s donation scandal.
The EU Parliament has withdrawn MP immunity from former AfD chairman Jörg Meuthen. A majority of MEPs voted in Strasbourg on Tuesday for a corresponding report. The Berlin public prosecutor’s office had requested the waiver of immunity “in order to initiate criminal proceedings,” it said. The background is the AfD donation affair, in which a Swiss PR company supported Meuthen in the 2016 state election campaign in Baden-Württemberg.
Donation affair of the AFD in Baden-Württemberg: Now the AFD boss is threatened with criminal proceedings
As the then federal spokesman for the AfD, Meuthen is said to have “allegedly” not clearly stated the services of the PR company of around 90,000 euros in the annual report for 2016 to the Bundestag, according to the report by the EU parliament. The Bundestag had already classified this as a prohibited acceptance of anonymous donations in 2019 and imposed a fine of 269,400 euros on the AfD.
In the state election campaign in Baden-Württemberg in 2016, Meuthen ran in two constituencies. A PR agency called Goal AG hung up posters there, distributed flyers and placed ads in local newspapers – the advertising measures ended up being worth almost 90,000 euros.
Did Jörg Meuthen himself vote for the lifting of his immunity?
According to the EU Parliament, the former AfD boss is also suspected of having “provided incorrect or incomplete information” in statements for the years 2017 and 2018. In 2017 it is about help for the election campaigns for the NRW state elections in 2017 and for the federal elections. In connection with the state elections in Bavaria in 2018, Meuthen is said to have “allegedly submitted an inaccurate report”.
This now ensured that 618 MEPs voted to remove Meuthen’s immunity. 41 voted against, 36 abstained. Meuthen had announced on Monday that he would vote for his withdrawal of immunity in the “interest of completing the public prosecutor’s investigations as quickly as possible”. He is convinced that “all the suspicions that have been raised will finally prove to be unfounded and inaccurate,” said Meuthen.
As a member of the European Parliament, Meuthen has so far been protected from investigations by the public prosecutor. He has been in Brussels for the AfD since November 2017. At the end of January, Meuthen announced his exit from the AfD. He justified this by saying that the party had slipped too far to the right. However, he wanted to continue his work in the European Parliament as an independent.
Last week, however, Meuthen also left the right-wing populist group Identity and Democracy in the European Parliament, of which he was vice-chairman. Meuthen could not initially be reached for an inquiry as to whether he would join another parliamentary group and continue to exercise his mandate.