Will the AfD want Germany to leave the EU?

SOURCE: DW – AUTHOR: M.J. GDNUS

Although the Alternative for Germany (AfD) program, which will be debated this January, prioritizes the policy of stopping migration and immigration, it also includes the sentence: "We consider it necessary for Germany to leave the European Union and establish a new European community."

This "community" would be something like a "Europe of different nations," in which there would only be a common market and which would represent "common economic and political interests." The AfD does not even want a common currency, the euro, even though they admit in their manifesto that a sharp cut would be counterproductive and propose new negotiations on the creation of some kind of currency union.

But the central demand is the desire for German citizens to express their opinion on membership in the European Union. In fact, Germans have never had the opportunity to say this in a referendum, even if it would be quite questionable legally: Germany is also defined as a member of the EU by the Constitution, which means that the fundamental document of German democracy would also have to be changed.

The resentment against the common currency and the European Union is an old story among AfD supporters and was especially loud during the debt crisis that hit Greece and some other southern European countries. But even the AfD leadership knows that EU membership is important to German citizens. According to surveys by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 87% of German citizens would vote to remain in the EU in a referendum.