#Beatrix von storch full#

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Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. 'People back in Germany don't know so much about the groups within the European Parliament,' she said.During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. Von Storch said she still expected her party to do well in Sunday's local elections in Germany. The party entered the EU parliament with seven deputies, but five of them have since started their own party because they felt the AfD had become too extreme in its views on migration. The AfD had already lost some of its MEPs after a split. Van Dalen, for instance, is a member of a Dutch Christian party which is more left-wing on social affairs than many other ECR parties. The row highlights the substantial differences in the ECR, a group which has one of the least cohesive voting patterns in the European Parliament. She said: “Why should we leave? Because Peter van Dalen doesn't feel well?” Von Storch said Pretzell remained defiant on Wednesday.

Sign up for EUobserver’s daily newsletterĪll the stories we publish, sent at 7.30 AM.īy signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. But the group's spokesman James Holtum also said the Cameron-Merkel theory was “completely not true”. Group leader Syed Kamall, one of Cameron’s MEP, declined to comment on Wednesday. He said if Von Storch and the group’s other AfD member, Marcus Pretzell, would not leave voluntarily, he would present a motion on 12 April to expel them, adding: “That motion is definitely going to pass.” “This originates entirely from within the ECR,” he said. He said there was no Cameron-Merkel deal. The ECR’s Van Dalen also disputed Von Storch's version of events. The source said there was no vote on Tuesday only because ECR deputies wanted more time to make their decision. If there was a majority, we would have had a vote yesterday night,” she said.Īnother ECR source, who asked not to be named, gave a different account of events, however. “We have realised that there is no majority to expel us from the group. She said her party still had the backing of the majority of the group.

“If this was the real reason, why wait until five days ahead of the election?”, she said. Von Storch said the firearms comments and the Dusseldorf meeting are not the real reasons for the expulsion because her party had already explained itself to the ECR in recent weeks. He would rather stick with CDU, and our British delegation is playing that game,” she said. “David Cameron needs the help of Angela Merkel, and he obviously does not want to have real reformists in his group. She said that British PM David Cameron, whose Conservative Party MEPs account for 27 percent of the ECR, instructed them to orchestrate her party’s defenestration in return for Merkel’s help in talks on new terms for British EU membership. “ Angela Merkel wants to damage AfD before our election,” she said. He said the AfD comments on whether it is permitted to use firearms against refugees were “inhumane”.įollowing the AfD-FPO meeting, Van Dalen's group released a statement saying: “This evening a spokesman for the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, said: 'The ECR Bureau met this evening and has invited the AfD to leave the ECR Group before 31 March, otherwise a motion will be tabled to expel them at its next meeting on 12 April’.” Election ‘damage’īeatrix von Storch, an MEP for AfD, told this website that the whole affair was designed to damage the party's chances in regional elections in Germany this Sunday. “The meeting with FPO, caught on video, was very shocking to several members,” said Van Dalen, calling it a “game-changer”. The FPO sits in a different European Parliament group alongside French members from the extremist National Front party.

While ECR leader Syed Kamall (l) would not comment, his spokesperson said a theory that Merkel and Cameron are behind the affair was 'completely not true' (Photo: European Parliament)ĭutch ECR member Peter van Dalen told this website that the debate had been triggered by recent incidents, inlcuding comments by AfD members about the use of firearms to prevent migrants crossing the German border, and a meeting in Dusseldorf between leading members of AfD and the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO).

Beatrix von storch