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German far-right AfD party wins mayor's office amid record-high polling
Germany’s far-right AfD notched up another first Sunday when its candidate was
elected a full-time town mayor, in a further boost for the anti-immigration party.
Issued on: 03/07/2023 - 08:36
AfD supporters pictured at a rally in Schwerin in northern Germany on August 10, 2021
© John Macdougall, AFP
Text by: NEWS WIRES
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged to record highs in opinion polls, and the latest result comes just a week after they won their first district election.
Hannes Loth was elected mayor of the small town of Raguhn-Jessnitz, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, in a run-off against independent candidate Nils Naumann, according to results on the town’s Facebook page.
Loth, reportedly a 42-year-old farmer who was already a member of the local parliament, won 51.1 percent of the vote against 48.9 percent for Naumann in the town of about 9,000 inhabitants.
It marks the first time the party has won an election race for a full-time mayor’s position, German media reported.
AfD members have held positions as voluntary, or part-time, mayors in smaller places. An AfD member was a full-time mayor of a town in southwest Germany from 2018 to 2020 but was not elected under the party’s banner – he joined the outfit during his term.
Loth thanked his supporters for the “wonderful result. I will be mayor for everyone in Raguhn-Jessnitz,” he wrote on social media.
In last week’s election, Robert Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional lawmaker, won a runoff for district administrator in Sonneberg in the central state of Thuringia, near the border with Bavaria.
Recent surveys have put support for the AfD at a record 18 to 20 percent, neck-and-neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and behind only the conservative CDU/CSU bloc.
Thomas Krueger, head of the federal agency for civic education, warned this weekend the party should not be dismissed as a “mere protest movement”.
“Voters want this party... the situation is serious,” he told the RND media group.
EU summit ends with a whimper as Poland and Hungary
resist migration reform
by Jorge Liboreiro, Euronews, June 30, 2023:
Poland and Hungary made good on their promise to prevent the European Council from adopting joint conclusions on migration.
The two countries, which have long held hard-line views on the reception and relocation of asylum seekers, put their foot down after long and intense discussions among the 27 heads of state and government.
The blockage, which began on Thursday and continued all through Friday, forced leaders to delete the migration section from the summit’s conclusions, wiping out several paragraphs that had been widely anticipated.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, issued instead a separate statement on his behalf, recycling wording from the rejected draft.
“There wasn’t unanimity, but there was a great deal of convergence, which was not at all there just a few years ago,” Michel said in a press conference.
“We got 25 out of 27 countries.”
The Polish-Hungarian opposition stems from a major deal struck earlier this month in Luxembourg, where home affairs ministers agreed to move forward with a proposed reform of the EU’s migration policy.
The overhaul, which stills need to be negotiated with the European Parliament, is based on a new system of “mandatory solidarity” and offers member states three options to collectively deal with migration flows:
Accept a number of relocated asylum seekers.
Pay €20,000 for each rejected applicant….
Astonishing! Only two sensible countries in the whole EU.
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