AfD leader vows to close Germany’s borders

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party intends to close the nation’s borders and halt illegal migration if it secures a position in the government following the federal election in February, the right-wing party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, has promised.

Germans want “normality” and the AfD will deliver it to them, Weidel said at a campaign rally in Neu-Isenburg near Frankfurt in central Germany on Saturday. “We will start on Day One by closing the borders and rejecting every illegal entrant. We will tell the world that the German borders are finally closed.”

Weidel added that the party plans to expel those who are required to leave the country and implement an “immediate moratorium on naturalization.”

According to government data, the number of migrants living in Germany with some form of international protection reached a record high of 3.48 million last year. 

“We will leave the World Health Organization... we will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement; we will immediately cancel the carbon tax,” Weidel said.

Criticizing the government’s renewable energy initiatives, she promised “an immediate halt to wind farms,” promising: “We will tear down these ugly structures.”

She went on to say that the AfD plans to “cancel all subsidies for technologies that are expensive, but inefficient and destroy the backbone of our energy policy.”

“Germany is an industrial country,” which needs “cheap and safe energy,” the AfD co-leader insisted, adding that a return to nuclear power is part of her party’s agenda. The last three nuclear power plants were closed in the country in 2023.

“We want to have competition in the automobile market... We want electric cars to compete with our combustion engines. What is wrong with that?” she said.

A crowd of around 9,000 people took to the streets of Neu-Isenburg on Saturday to protest an AfD event in the town. Left-wing demonstrators clashed with officers and tried to set police vehicles on fire, according to Deutsche Welle.

The AfD, which was established in 2013 and is known for its hardline anti-immigration stance, is currently polling at around 20%, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) at 16%, but behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at 31%.