The US Vice President JD Vance scored during a visit to Munich on Friday, nine days before a German election and after he had taught European leaders about the state of democracy.
Vance met Alice Weidel, the co-leader and candidate for Chancellor of the right-wing extremist and anti-immigrant alternative for the German party, shared his office.
German mainstream parties say that they will not work with the party, an attitude that is often referred to as “firewall”. Surveys supported the alternative for Germany or AfD in second place in the election on February 23 with around 20 percent.
The news of the meeting came after the top German officials against Vances had hard back complaints about the state of democracy in Europe. The defense minister called it “unacceptable” to move a parallel to authoritarian governments. He and Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended the firewall of the German mainstream parties.
At the Munich Security Conference, the US Vice President JD Vance insulted the European allies because he supposedly supposedly suppressed freedom of speech, a threat that he described greater than Russia or China. Vance also accused the host country Germany to silence right political voices.
Vance said on Friday at the Munich Security Conference that he fears that freedom of speech was “in retreat” on the entire continent.
“For many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, a different opinion or, forbid God, vote for a different way or win a choice worse,” said Vance.
Comments “unacceptable,” says German Minister
The German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, a few hours later, said that he could not allow the speech to have expired without comment.
“If I understand him correctly, he compares the conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimens,” said Pistorius. “This is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and are currently fighting.”
Vance also told the European leaders: “If they are in fear of their own voters, it can’t do anything for them.” He said that no democracy could survive to tell millions of voters that their concerns are “invalid or unworthy of being even considered”.
“Democracy is based on the holy principle that the voice of the people counts,” he said. “There is no space for firewalls.”
Pistorius countered: “Every opinion has a voice in this democracy. It enables sometimes extremist parties like AfD, just like any other party.”
He noticed that Weidel was on Thursday evening together with the other competitors on German Prime Time Television.
But he added that “democracy does not mean that the loud minority is automatically correct” and that “democracy must be able to defend themselves against the extremists they want to destroy”.
Scholz has released the social network X to expressly reject Vance’s comments.
“From the experiences of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus on the firewall against extreme right-wing parties,” he wrote
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he had a good conversation with the US Vice President JD Vance and that more work is necessary for a plan to end war in Ukraine.
The Bavarian governor Markus Söder-a prominent personality in the German center-right opposition block, which leads to the election surveys, told the reporters that “we take every opinion seriously, but we decide who we form a coalition with”, reported the German news agency dpa.
In a post on X on Friday, Weidel wrote “Excellent speech!” There is no space for firewalls! “
Vance’s meeting with Weidel came after being received on Wednesday by the right -wing nationalist prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán. The Vice President’s office said Vance also met on Friday with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the opposition leader Friedrich Merz, while he met Scholz at the beginning of this week when both were in Paris about artificial intelligence.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has questioned how Vance asked European officials to contain irregular migration in the speech on Friday. Vance said that the European electorate had not been chosen to open “locks for millions of non -opposite immigrants”.
“He speaks as if we are not concentrating on immigration in Europe,” said Gahr Støre. “I mean, that’s the big topic in every country that we want control over our limits.”
He argued that Ukrainian refugees have made up a significant increase in countless immigrants in recent years – and they have been accepted “because he was running a bloody war in front of him, which in my opinion does not really appeal to reality.”
“I do not agree that what happens in Ukraine, what happens in Russia, what happens in China is less important than the suspected loss of freedom of speech in Europe,” said Gahr Støre.
