Alternative for Germany seeks international friends and legitimacy ahead of upcoming national election.
German far-right chancellor candidate Alice Weidel hailed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a “great role model” during her first official meeting with a European leader Wednesday in Budapest.
Her party, Alternative for Germany or AfD, “Will follow the path of Hungary, our great role model, if we are part of the government,” said Weidel ahead of the German election on Feb. 23.
Weidel’s two-day visit to Hungary illustrates her party’s hunger for international recognition and legitimacy. The AfD has already sought close ties with the administration of United States President Donald Trump following an endorsement by tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk.
The Hungarian leader welcomed Weidel, who had requested the visit ahead of Germany’s national election, with enthusiasm.
“The AfD is not a party that is welcomed by prime ministers in all European countries — but it is high time we change that,” said Orbán after a meeting with Weidel at his official residence.
Orbán then reassured his electorate, “Everything the AfD represents today would be very good for Hungary,” underscoring close economic ties between the two countries as well as the similar anti-immigrant stance of both parties.
Weidel also made clear she would seek to collaborate with Orbán in Brussels.
“We should work together to reform the European Union at all costs. And that can only be done from within,” she said, adding: “We can achieve this by reducing the competences of the European Union, by dismantling the entire bureaucratic, expensive — and, in my view, corrupt — superstructure.”
The AfD and Orbán’s Fidesz sit in different political groups in the European Parliament. Orbán created the Patriots for Europe last summer out of the ashes of the Identity and Democracy group.
The AfD had been kicked out of the latter due to a rift with far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who sought to distance herself from the German party following a series of scandals — and in an attempt to present her own party as more moderate to French voters. The AfD subsequently formed its own far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group.
Csongor Körömi contributed reporting from Brussels.
