Scholz replies to Vance that he will not accept interference and that they will maintain the cordon sanitaire against the extreme right

BerlinGerman Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday criticised the interference of US Vice President JD Vance in the German elections on 23 February at the Munich Security Conference and called for maintaining a cordon sanitaire around the far right.

Vance on Friday criticised the state of democracy in Europe and spoke of the need for other German parties to break the cordon sanitaire and cooperate with the far right. The US vice president met in Munich with Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

"We will not accept that people who see Germany from outside participate in our democracy, in our elections and in the democratic process of opinion formation in the interests of this party. This is simply not done, and especially not among friends and allies. We reject it outright. The course that our full democracy takes.

"There will be no cooperation" with the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), the chancellor made clear a week before the German elections on February 23. The conservatives of the CDU-CSU, who are the favorites in these elections, also rejected any alliance with the extremists to form a government.

Scholz recalled that the Munich Security Conference is taking place 20 kilometres away from the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. "Never again! is the central lesson that we Germans learned after the Second World War from the horrific experience of the Nazi terror regime. And that this was possible, by the way, is largely due to the great support that the United States gave us at that time," said the Chancellor, who defended the importance of German culture.

"Never again fascism, never again racism, never again a war of aggression," proclaimed Scholz, echoing the famous phrase Never again! about the need not to forget the Holocaust and never allow such a crime to happen again.

Common consensus

Scholz explained that in Germany the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus to maintain a cordon sanitaire or firewall around the extreme right. The majority of Germans are against those who "glorify or justify criminal National Socialism," he said.

The chancellor recalled that Alternative for Germany is "a party in whose ranks National Socialism and its monstrous crimes, crimes against humanity such as those committed in Dachau, were trivialized as a simple stain on German history."

A week before the German elections, Alternative for Germany (AfD) is second in the polls in voting intention, behind the conservatives of Friedrich Merz and in front of the Social Democrats, the party of Chancellor Scholz.

Far-right candidate Alice Weidel has not only won the support of Vance in this election campaign, but also of billionaire Elon Musk and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.