Clashes between hooded demonstrators and police marked the start of a party congress of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), weeks after it scored record EU election results despite multiple scandals.
About 1,000 police were deployed in the western city of Essen as about 600 delegates began a two-day meeting, with authorities expecting up to 80,000 people to join demonstrations.
“Several disruptive violent actions occurred in the Rüttenscheid quarter. Demonstrators, some of them hooded, attacked security forces. Several arrests were made,” said the police of North Rhine-Westphalia region on X.
A top regional official had warned that “potentially violent far-left troublemakers” could be among the protesters.
“We are here and we will stay,” said the AfD co-president Alice Weidel, opening the congress and drawing sustained applause.
“We have the right, like all political parties, to hold a congress.”
Adding to the security forces’ headache is the Euro 2024 football tournament, with the last-16 clash between hosts Germany and Denmark taking place on Saturday in Dortmund, not far from Essen.
In early June, the AfD had its best EU election result since its creation in 2013, winning 16% of the vote to take second place.
It was behind the main conservative CDU-CSU opposition bloc but ahead of the Social Democrats (SPD) – the party of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz – which is in power at the head of a troubled three-party coalition.
Buoyed up by a surge in immigration and a weak performance by Europe’s top economy, the party hit as high as 22% in opinion polls in January.
However, their support faltered amid a welter of scandals that mainly implicated their top EU election candidate, Maximilian Krah.
“I believe that the party has learned a lot in recent months and will be very careful when we put forward leading candidates in the future,” Weidel, who is standing for re-election, told the Politico news outlet on Thursday.
Krah initially faced allegations of suspicious links to Russia and China.
He then sparked widespread anger by telling an Italian newspaper that not every member of the Nazis’ notorious SS was “automatically a criminal”.
The comments prompted the AfD to be expelled from the far-right European parliament group Identity and Democracy (ID), in which France’s National Rally (RN) and Italy’s League had been its partners.
While the AfD has sought to shift the blame for its recent woes on to Krah, there were signs of problems before.
The RN had already distanced itself from the AfD after reports emerged in January that the German party had discussed the expulsion of immigrants and “non-assimilated” citizens at a meeting with extremists.
The reports caused shock in Germany and triggered weeks of mass protests.
After the EU polls, the AfD ejected Krah from the delegation it sends to Brussels, but the ID group does not seem ready to readmit the party, leaving it searching for new partners.
At the AfD congress, delegates will be asked to vote on a motion proposing an end to the practice of having two party co-presidents.
Instead, there would be one president and a general secretary.
If the motion is approved, Tino Chrupalla – the party’s other co-president – could lose his position, German media have reported.
He has been highly critical of Krah, meaning he could be targeted by the disgraced politician’s supporters.
Chrupalla and Weidel have both backed introducing the post of secretary general, which they believe could help professionalise the AfD before Germany’s 2025 parliamentary elections.
The congress comes before three key elections in September in states that once formed part of communist East Germany, and where the AfD has been topping opinion polls.