The European Union must “behave” or Germany will quit the bloc, the leader of the far-Right AfD party has threatened.
Alice Weidel, co-president of Alternative for Deutschland, claims the EU would not survive “Dexit” – the German version of Brexit – but her country would.
Ms Weidel also attacked other parties for refusing to go into coalition with the AfD after it triumphed in the eastern state of Thuringia on Sunday.
The party came a whisker from winning in another state, Saxony, in the best electoral results for the far Right in Germany since the rise of the Nazis.
“Germany, to survive, does not need the EU. The EU, in contrast, needs Germany. The EU needs to behave accordingly. Only under these conditions will Germany’s exit from the EU be rendered not necessary,” Ms Weidel said.
EU ‘must respect our vital interests’
She told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper: “Dexit, Germany’s departure from the EU, is for us a last resort. We don’t want to destroy things, we want to reform them.
“But that will happen only if our European partners understand that they must respect our vital interests.”
Ms Weidel said in January that Germany could hold a referendum on EU membership and that Brexit could be “a model” for the country.
Björn Höcke, the AfD’s leader in Thuringia, one of its strongholds in the former East Germany, sponsored a resolution to dissolve the EU in 2022.