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Far-right German party faces expulsion from EP group

Xinhua, March 9, 2016 Adjust font size:

The far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) faces expulsion from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament (EP), it emerged Wednesday on the sidelines of the EP plenary session here.

In a terse statement, a spokesman for the ECR said: "The ECR bureau has invited the AfD to leave the ECR before March 31, otherwise a motion will be tabled to expel them at its next meeting on April 12."

The ECR is dominated by the United Kingdom's governing Conservative Party, which is riven by internal squabbles in the run-up to the June referendum on whether Britain should stay in or leave the European Union (EU).

The move to expel the AfD prompted an angry response from one of its two MEPs, Beatrix von Storch, who posted on her Facebook page that the expulsion was motivated by the need for British Prime Minister David Cameron to bolster support from German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the Brexit referendum approaches.

Merkel herself is under pressure at home where the AfD is making a strong showing in regional elections amidst concerns over the Chancellor's management of the migration crisis.

The ECR was formed in 2009 after Cameron took his party's MEPs out of the main center-right group, the European People's Party, which in turn is the group representing Merkel's Christian Democrats in the EP.

Following the European elections in 2014, the ECR invited the AfD to join the group, reportedly against Cameron's wishes. As the AfD adopted a more strident right wing, anti-immigrant stance, a formal split occurred in 2015, with most of the party's MEPs leaving to form a new party, Alliance for Progress and Renewal, which will remain within the ECR. The AfD was left with just two MEPs, von Storch and Marcus Pretzell. Endit