Viktor Orbán has hailed the far-right Alternative for Germany as “the future” of Europe’s largest nation as he hosted the party’s co-leader Alice Weidel less than two weeks before federal elections.
In a sign of the growing acceptance of the AfD by the global far right, the Hungarian prime minister said on Wednesday that the meeting should herald the opening of the doors to the party, once shunned for its attitudes towards the Nazi past.
“The AfD is not a party that is received by premiers in every European country,” Orbán said at a joint press conference with Weidel. “But it is high time we changed that.”
Weidel, who also recently won the backing of the world’s richest man and key Donald Trump aide Elon Musk, thanked Orbán for accepting her request to meet and described him as a “symbol of reason, sovereignty and independence”.
AfD, which could become the second-largest force in the Bundestag after elections on February 23, seeks closer relations with European allies as part of a drive to “reduce the powers of the European Union, by dismantling the entire bureaucratic, expensive and — in my view — corrupt superstructure”, Weidel said.
The AfD is not a member of Orbán’s Patriots of Europe group in the European parliament, mainly due to opposition from France’s Marine Le Pen whose party sought to distance itself last year from its former ally, AfD, which was then seen as a liability.
Orbán, the EU’s longest-serving prime minister and early backer of Trump, said he had long resisted drawing closer to the AfD as he wanted to keep balanced ties with the German government.
But shifting geopolitics and the German party’s growing popularity meant “everything has changed now”, he said.
“The AfD is the future, obviously,” he went on. “When the ruling elite refuses to represent the people, but a party comes along that sides with the people, it owns the future . . . Ties with such a party can no longer be penalised by national governments, not even in Germany.”
Like Orbán, the AfD has called for the lifting of sanctions on Moscow and the resumption of gas flows from Russia in order to revive Germany’s stagnating economy. The two parties also share a hardline stance on migration.
The Hungarian leader said his country “would benefit from each point in the AfD programme, from migration to energy policy”, urging like-minded leaders to “revolt” against Brussels.
Weidel’s return to the European far-right fold comes a year after mass protests were held in Germany against her party, after it emerged that AfD officials held secret meetings discussing “remigration”, or the forced deportation of German citizens from ethnic minorities. Weidel has since publicly embraced the highly charged term while stopping short of calling for the expulsion of German citizens.
Later, the AfD’s top candidate for the European parliament, Maximilian Krah, said that not all members of the Nazi SS were criminals.
Further spying and foreign influence scandals involving AfD lawmakers and their staff allegedly working for Russia and China came out last year, prompting Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party to draw a line between its former EU parliament ally.
But the AfD has been energised by the re-election of Trump and the support from Musk, who has heavily promoted the party on his social media platform X. An AfD delegation joined the US president’s inauguration last month at the invitation of members of the Republican party.
The AfD has also been buoyed by recent events in neighbouring Austria, where the leader of the far-right Freedom party has been tasked with forming a government — although negotiations faltered on Wednesday.
