The head of the list of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) party, Maximilian Krah, said in an interview published this weekend in the Italian daily La Repubblica that an SS member "is not automatically a criminal".
According to his campaign manager, Alexandre Loubet, the decision to break with the AfD was taken by Jordan Bardella on Tuesday afternoon.
"We had had frank discussions, but the lessons had not been learned: we are drawing the consequences", he explained, referring to the countless controversies sparked by this German partner, which was as cumbersome as it seemed essential to maintain the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, in which the two parties previously sat.
Founded in 2013, the populist, anti-migrant German party had the wind in its sails until the beginning of the year, with the polls giving it hopes of coming out on top in Germany with nearly 25% of the vote.
But in mid-January, the participation, revealed by the media, of some of its members in a meeting of the ultra-right to discuss a plan for the mass expulsion of foreigners and nationals deemed to be poorly assimilated shocked the country.
In April, an investigation was opened into suspicions of Russian and Chinese funding against outgoing MEP Maximilian Krah, one of whose assistants at the European Parliament, suspected of being a Chinese agent, had just been arrested.
Last week, one of the party's leading figures, Björn Höcke, was fined €13,000 for using a Nazi slogan. In the past, he had already described the Holocaust monument in Berlin as a "memorial of shame" and called for a "180-degree change" in the country's culture of remembrance, leading the intelligence services in Germany to monitor the AfD.
The Rassemblement National demanded explanations from its partner, which were deemed unsatisfactory, but postponed a definitive decision until after the polls.
The AfD is now credited with around 15% of voting intentions, relegated to second, third or even fourth place.
