The Vice President of the US JD Vance met with the leader of the German Extremely Right Party during a visit to Munich on Friday, nine days before German elections and after lecturing European leaders about the state of democracy.
His office said that Vance met with Alice Weidel, a co -chairman and candidate for a far -right chancellor and an anti -immigrant alternative to Germany.
The German mainstream parties claim that they will not work with the party, the position often called the “barrier”. The polls were an alternative to Germany, i.e. AFD, in second place in the election of February 23 with about 20 % support.
The news about the meeting appeared after the highest German officials strongly pushed Vance's complaints about the state of democracy in Europe, and the Minister of Defense calls it “unacceptable” to derive parallelism with authoritarian rule. He and Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended the firewall of the German mainstream event.
At a security conference in Munich, the US vice president JD Vance demolished European allies for allegedly suppressing freedom of speech, a threat, which he called greater than Russia or China. Vance also accused the host country of Germany of silencing right -wing political voices.
Vance said on Friday at a security conference in Munich that he was afraid that freedom of speech is “in isolation” throughout the continent.
“For many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, rooted interests hiding behind the ugly words of Soviet times, such as misinformation and disinformation, which simply does not like the idea that someone with an alternative point of view can express another opinion Or, God, forbid, vote in a different way, and even worse, wins the choice – said Vance.
Comments “unacceptable” – says the German minister
The German defense minister Boris Pistorius, saying a few hours later, said that he could not allow speech to be held.
“If I understood him well, he compares the conditions in parts of Europe with the conditions in authoritarian regimes,” said Pistorius. “This is unacceptable and it is not Europe, not a democracy in which I live and currently conduct a campaign.”
Vance also told European leaders that “if you run for fear of your own voters, nothing can do for you.” He said that no democracy could survive, telling millions of voters, that their fears “are invalid or unworthy of being considered.”
“Democracy is based on the holy principle that the voice of the people matters,” he said. “There is no room for firewalls.”
Pistorius replied that “every opinion has a voice in this democracy. It enables partially extremist parties, such as AFD, to conduct a campaign completely normally, just like any other party. “
He noticed that Weidel was on German television at the best time on Thursday evening with other pretenders.
He added, however, that “democracy does not mean that the loud minority is automatically proper” and that “democracy must be able to defend itself against extremists who want to destroy it.”
Scholz published the X community network to “definitely reject” Vance comments.
“From the experience of Nazism, democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus-this is a dam against extreme right-wing parties,” he wrote
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says that he had a good conversation with the US vice president JD Vance and that more work is needed on the plan to end the war in Ukraine.
Bavarian Governor Markus Söder-a frequent figure in the middle right opposition block of Germany, who runs pre -boran polls-told journalists that “we treat every opinion seriously, but we decide to who we create a coalition with,” the German press agency DPA informed.
In the post on the 10th earlier Friday, Weidel wrote “A perfect speech!” There is no room for firewalls! “
Vance from Weidel took place after she was received on Wednesday by the right -wing Hungarian nationalist Viktor Orbán. The vice president said that Vance also met on Friday with the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and opposition leader Friedrich Merz, while he met Scholz at the beginning of this week, when they were both in Paris at the top of artificial intelligence.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre questioned how Vance called European officials to stop irregular migration in a Friday speech. Vance said that the European electorate did not vote for the opening of “flood veins for millions of unchanged immigrants.”
“He says as if we didn't focus on immigration in Europe,” said Gahr Støre. “I mean that this is a big topic in every country that we want to have control over our borders.”
He argued that Ukrainian refugees were a significant increase in the number of unintentional immigrants in recent years – and were accepted “because a bloody war was underway, which he did not mention, which in my opinion I do not really deal with reality.”
“I do not agree with him that what is happening in Ukraine is what is happening in Russia, what is happening in China is less important than the alleged loss of freedom of speech in Europe,” said Gahr Støre.