The affair could shake up the European elections. A few weeks before the election, an assistant to a MEP from the German far-right AfD party was arrested across the Rhine. The man is suspected of spying for China, the federal prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday April 23.
The man, named Jian G., has worked since 2019 for Maximilian Krah, head of the party’s list for the European elections (June 6 to 8). Arrested Monday in Dresden, in the east of the country, the suspect of German nationality is accused of having spied on members of the Chinese opposition and of having shared information on the European Parliament with a Chinese intelligence service. The accused “had transmitted information on the negotiations and decisions of the European Parliament to his client on several occasions in January 2024 […]”, said the prosecution in a press release. This Tuesday, the spokesperson for the European Parliament announced the suspension of the parliamentary assistant. In view of “the decision of the German judicial authorities to question an individual currently working as an accredited assistant within the European Parliament, and given the seriousness of the revelations, the Parliament suspended the person in question with immediate effect”, said this spokesperson.
An “attack on European democracy”
These are significant accusations, as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) hopes to double its number of representatives in the European Parliament. Founded in 2013 on an anti-European discourse, the identity party has continued to progress in the polls, before losing a few points in the polls in recent weeks, weakened among other things by a survey by the site Correctionrevealing the holding of a conspiracy meeting between neo-Nazis and party officials.
Despite its waning popularity, the AfD continues to appeal. And remains the second most popular party in Germany according to polls. According to the INSA results published at the beginning of April, the party could collect 19% of the votes in the European elections, losing 3 points compared to February and placing itself behind the CDU and the CSU. Nationally, the trend is similar. Sunday, a new Insa survey for the tabloid Bild am Sonntag attributed 18% of voting intentions to the AfD, compared to 22% on January 20.
Faced with this umpteenth scandal, the xenophobic party was quick to react on Tuesday. “As we currently have no further information on this matter, we must await the continuation of the investigation carried out by the Attorney General,” assured the AfD from Berlin, adding that these revelations were “very worrying”. For her part, the German Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, described the espionage affair as“extremely serious”. “If it is confirmed that Chinese intelligence services spied on the European Parliament from the inside, it would be an attack on European democracy,” she declared in a press release, shortly after the announcement of the arrest of the suspect.
Cascading arrests
Accusations firmly refuted by Beijing this Tuesday, which denied everything “alleged Chinese espionage”. “The theory of the threat of alleged Chinese espionage is not a new thing in European public opinion,” underlined the spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Wang Wenbin, denouncing a “calumny” destined to “destroy the atmosphere of cooperation between China and Europe”.
However, this is not the first time that German nationals have been accused of spying for the Chinese secret services. On Monday, three people were arrested in Düsseldorf and Bad Homburg, in the west of the country. All of German nationality, they “are strongly suspected of having worked for a Chinese secret service from a date not exactly defined before June 2022”, said the federal prosecutor.
Arrests which occur a few days after the discovery of a sabotage project on behalf of Moscow. On Thursday April 18, German authorities announced the arrest of two suspected Russian agents, suspected of having planned acts aimed at supporting the “Putin’s criminal regime” in its war against Ukraine. The two men, who also have German nationality, were this time arrested in Bayreuth, in the south-east of the country.