German far-right politicians of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party will no longer be banned from Europe’s top security forum.
The new leadership of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), Europe’s most relevant annual policy conference on international security, decided to reverse the ban policy of recent years and invite all parties represented in the German parliament.
MSC’s acting chair, Wolfgang Ischinger, defended the policy shift from his predecessor’s decision in an interview with the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Monday.
He argued that the invitation will not tear down the political firewall that keeps the AfD out of the German federal government.
“We only invite individual specialist politicians from the relevant committees to participate. In doing so, we are returning to the practice and logic that applied until 2024,” Ischinger said.
An MSC spokesperson told Euractiv that no AfD politician is expected to appear on stage at the next conference, which will take place in February.
The organisers’ U-turn came after the US vice-president JD Vance used the conference to frontally accuse the EU of backtracking on fundamental values such as freedom of expression during the last edition, explicitly pointing to the MSC’s ban on populist politicians.
“When political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them,” Vance said on stage in February. On that same day, he met with AfD chief Alice Weidel.
The meeting took place in the run-up to the German elections, in which billionaire X owner and Trump ally Elon Musk strongly supported Weidel’s campaign.
AfD eventually came up second in the polls. In an explosive decision in May, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classified the party as a right-wing extremist group.
The move, suspended six days later, would have allowed for extra surveillance and a possible future outright ban.
(vib)