Far-right German party denies plan to deport immigrants

Berlin — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party said on Wednesday it has no plans to adopt a proposal to deport immigrants with German passports, which investigative portal Correctiv said had been aired at a meeting attended by senior party officials.

Correctiv said Roland Hartwig, a personal assistant to AfD leader Alice Weidel, and Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s leader in the state of Saxony Anhalt, had met neo-Nazi influencers and wealthy business people late in 2023 in a hotel near Berlin.

At the meeting, Martin Sellner, an Austrian leader of the far-right Identitarian Movement, had proposed a project of “remigration”, whereby “unassimilated” immigrants would be forced to leave Germany — even if they had citizenship.

Also floated at the meeting was an idea for deportees to be sent to a “model state” in North Africa, Correctiv said, citing hidden camera footage, accounts by attendees and reporters staking out the hotel.

The AfD confirmed Hartwig was present at the meeting but said the reported proposals are not party policy. Siegmund did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.

“The AfD won’t change its position on immigration policy because of a single opinion at a non-AfD meeting,” the party told Reuters. “At the meeting he [Hartwig] did not devise political strategies or relay to the party ideas of a Mr Sellner on migration policy, about whose presence he knew nothing ahead of time.”

Sellner did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Correctiv said Hartwig told participants the party was prepared to contribute financially to an idea floated at the meeting for an agency for right-wing influencers to help mould youth opinion ahead of coming elections. The AfD did not immediately respond to a request to comment on this.

The official manifesto of the AfD, which is surging in opinion polls, calls for the speeding up of deportations of declined asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

The party is vying with the opposition conservatives for first place in some opinion surveys, profiting from popular disillusionment at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fractious coalition’s struggles to boost the economy.

The AfD is under investigation by security authorities in several German states and is at risk of being declared an extremist organisation by national authorities, a move that could lead to it being banned. The party denies that it is extremist or racist.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution declined to comment on Correctiv’s report.

Reuters