Open dispute – AfD party conference ended prematurely
Federal party conference of the AFD ended prematurely in dispute
The AFD ended its party conference in Riesa, Saxony, in a dispute. This was preceded by the so-called Europe Resolution, which Björn Höcke also promoted. Party leader Tino Chrupalla criticized the resolution. This calls for too much rapprochement with Russia.
After a long argument, the AfD ended its party conference in Riesa early. One of the topics discussed was a Europe resolution introduced by Björn Höcke. The new dual leadership Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla opposed it – but lost very narrowly in a vote.
DThe AfD prematurely ended its party conference in Riesa, Saxony, on Sunday. After a long argument about foreign and European policy, in which no agreement could be reached on a common paper, the delegates decided to end the meeting in the afternoon. Various topics that were still on the agenda were no longer dealt with.
The reason for the dispute was a Europe resolution. Party right winger Björn Höcke campaigned for the text; the new dual leadership of Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla advocated not adopting it in its present form. However, Chrupalla’s motion to this effect was narrowly rejected by 210 to 208 votes.
Kay Gottschalk, member of the Bundestag, criticized that the new dual leadership would be “dismantled” just one day after their election. He called for the party congress to be broken off; a corresponding application failed extremely narrowly. In her intervention, Weidel said that the resolution entitled “Rethinking Europe” is on the whole going in the right direction, but that it was “not particularly successful” in terms of language. The text contains “very unspecific sentences that sound very bulky”.
Member of the Bundestag Thomas Seitz criticized the fact that the text “not once” contained the word war and that a Ukraine conflict was “completely played down”. Such papers would really get the party in trouble in the West, he said.
Other delegates campaigned vehemently for adoption. The AfD member of parliament Hans-Thomas Tillschneider from Saxony-Anhalt said that the application contained “exactly the terms and orientations that we as a message have to send to the outside world. The contrast between globalists and nation states – that is the world struggle in which we stand, and that is clearly stated here”.
One of the supporters of the resolution, the Bavarian delegate Rainer Rothfuss, spoke of a “trauma” and a “glitch” after the debate. However, one has to admit that the issue at stake is too complex to be dealt with so quickly in this context.
The draft resolution advocates, among other things, a “consensual dissolution of the EU”, which is described as a “misguided and dysfunctional political entity”.
Since the party congress did not seem to reach a consensus, after a while Chrupalla also took the floor. Because a narrow vote on such an important issue does not look good, he suggested transferring the resolution to the new federal executive board, which should revise it within two weeks with the responsible specialist committee and MEPs. However, the delegates did not follow him.
Höcke, who submitted the motion at the party conference, campaigned for the text to be accepted. The resolution is intended to counter the accusation that the AfD is “only against something,” said Höcke, with a view to last year’s decision for Germany to leave the EU. Therefore, the applicants had “designed a vision of our Europe”.