(Bloomberg) — Alice Weidelthe co-leader of Germany’s right-wing AfD party, said the victory of Marine Le PenThe French party’s Rassemblement National in the first round of the parliamentary elections is something to imitate.
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“I look at the result in France with admiration and respect,” Weidel told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) congress in Essen, western Germany, on Sunday. “I think it’s great that Marine Le Pen managed to achieve such a great result. And of course it’s also a role model for the AfD.”
Relations between Weidel and Le Pen have been strained since the right-wing French politician severed ties with the AfD ahead of European Parliament elections earlier this month. The AfD’s leading candidate, Maximilian Krah, told an Italian newspaper that not all members of the Nazi SS paramilitary organization were criminals, comments that prompted Le Pen to break with the German group.
The comments also led to the AfD being expelled from the Identity and Democracy alliance, a pan-European grouping of far-right parties, leaving the party largely isolated in the European Parliament.
Weidel rejected the claim that the AfD’s migration policies were too radical even for Europe’s other right-wing groups. “I don’t see anything wrong with our party manifesto,” she said. Le Pen’s National Rally was “in fact much stricter than us. Le Pen said that too,” she said.
Weidel does not expect a reconciliation with Le Pen anytime soon. “Of course I hope for a dialogue in the medium term. But I think in the short term we will leave it as it is. For now, I wish the National Rally the best of luck,” she said.
Le Pen’s National Rally was expected to receive between 33% and 34.2% of the vote, according to initial forecasts from four polling stations on Sunday. The left-wing coalition of the New Popular Front would get between 28.5% and 29.6% and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance between 21.5% and 22.4%.
At an AfD party convention in Essen last weekend, Weidel and her ally Tino Chrupalla were re-elected as party leaders, as tens of thousands of protesters gathered outside the venue and some clashed with police. Of the 600 delegates, 80% backed Weidel and 83% backed Chrupalla.
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