Why can’t the AfD work out where it stands on Europe?

Members of Germany’s AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland) party gathered in the eastern city of Magdeburg this weekend. The party’s aim during its conference was to choose candidates for the upcoming elections to the European parliament and thrash out policies on such thorny topics as immigration, and Germany’s place in Europe, including a possible ‘Dexit’. But their presence – as ever with the AfD – sparked a storm of protest.

Thousands of people took to the streets of the city to demonstrate against the ‘Nazis’ in their midst, but the ideological position of the party – on exiting the EU for instance – remains unclear: alternating between its moderate official policies and the overheated rhetoric of some of its leaders.

The lead candidate chosen for the Euros, for example, a Dresden lawyer named Maximilian Krah, called for the continent to become a ‘fortress’ against migration, while his deputy, Bjorn Hocke, said ‘the EU must die so Europe can live’.