Neither France’s National Rally nor Germany’s Alternative for Germany now argues for leaving the European Union. Both want to turn it into an alliance of sovereign states with weaker institutions and fewer powers. Euronews reports that if they took office, their plans could undermine the Franco-German partnership that has long driven European integration.
AfD leader Alice Weidel presented her “New Deal for Europe” at a press conference in the European Parliament on Wednesday, a week after Marine Le Pen set out her own vision at The Hotel in Brussels. Both are in strong electoral positions. After a major victory in Saxony-Anhalt’s regional election last September, the AfD is on course to lead a German state for the first time and is leading national polls. Weidel said in Strasbourg that the party’s aim is to take government responsibility after the next federal elections. In France, a recent Ifop poll puts Le Pen at 34% to 38% in the first round of the 2027 presidential election, despite a recent wave of protests.
Both parties oppose continued funding for Ukraine, criticise the EU’s regulatory burden, reject deeper integration and want to curb the powers of EU institutions. They differ on fiscal policy, energy and how far their countries should break from common rules. The AfD goes further, proposing opt-outs that would let Germany bypass certain EU policies.
Both leaders agree on ending financial support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s war of aggression. At her press conference last week, Le Pen argued that France’s strained public finances could no longer sustain aid to Kyiv and called for EU sanctions against Russia to be lifted. She said France had agreed to keep mechanisms to train Ukrainian soldiers and their army and to provide equipment, but could no longer finance Ukraine, so that funding would stop. Weidel said on Wednesday that she wants a peace treaty and a reasonable diplomatic approach that takes account of the security interests of Ukraine and Russia. In a recent interview with The Economist, she argued that Ukraine had already lost the war and pledged to end Germany’s support for Kyiv.
The sharpest split is on fiscal policy. Le Pen wants EU-level harmonisation of taxes on tobacco, alcohol and large companies to prevent fiscal dumping. She also suggested that the European Central Bank revise its mandate to give more weight to growth rather than price stability. She said the ECB must rethink its course and take account of employment, growth and innovation, arguing that monetary easing between 2010 and 2022 was not aimed at future investment. The AfD opposes any transfer of fiscal sovereignty to supranational institutions and says the ECB must stick to its original price-stability mandate. Weidel said there is a ban on the ECB financing state debt and asked what the bank is doing, answering that it is financing state debt.
Both parties firmly oppose common EU debt and want to cut their countries’ contributions to the EU budget. Le Pen aims to cap France’s net contribution at €5 billion a year. Neither Weidel nor the AfD paper gives a figure, instead stressing the need to end Germany’s role as paymaster.
On energy and climate, both criticise the EU Green Deal and support nuclear power, but their approaches differ. Le Pen rejected the climate-sceptic label for her party, backed an EU carbon border tax and proposed linking member states’ EU budget contributions to their carbon emissions. She said the further a country deviates from the Paris agreement targets, the more it should have to contribute. The AfD paper stresses freedom to choose the national energy mix, so Germany could use nuclear power, coal, gas and renewables according to the needs of its economy. Weidel said the country now relies completely on an ideological transition to wind and solar, a pattern she also sees across Europe through the Green Deal, the building energy law and the ban on combustion engines, which she called a blatant disruption of the free-market economy.
Both want the European Commission stripped of powers and reduced to what Le Pen called a secretariat at the service of countries. She said the Commission wants to be a state and that her side does not, rejecting EU executive ambitions on security, diplomacy and intelligence. She also wants to abolish the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee. Weidel said she does not want an unelected Commission to intrude on private life and on member states’ decision-making. The AfD goes further, questioning the legitimacy of the European Parliament and arguing for a Europe centred on sovereign nation-states. Its New Deal says the Parliament should no longer be elected directly and should instead be composed of delegates appointed by national parliaments.
Le Pen envisages reshaping the EU after elections in Spain, France, Italy and Poland, where far-right parties are expected to win or make significant gains. Poland’s Law and Justice party could return to power, and Spain’s Vox could join government alongside the Popular Party. In France, she could become the country’s first far-right president. She described a shared undertaking for the years and decades ahead that would not simply undo what she said had been very badly done on the European stage over the past 30 years, and claimed a new Europe of nations would have institutions that exercise no authority over member states.
The AfD instead identifies 2029 as the pivotal year, when European elections could produce a patriotic right-wing majority in the European Parliament. If reform fails, it floats national options including extensive German opt-outs on free movement, defence, taxation, social policy and migration. Weidel said that if Schengen is over and does not work, Germany needs to leave it and protect its borders, pointing to challenges to free movement such as the large-scale arrival of irregular migrants in Ceuta last July. A migration opt-out would mean Germany no longer takes part in European distribution mechanisms or asylum quotas, disrupting the Migration Pact. Berlin currently holds the biggest solidarity quota and is due to relocate 4,555 asylum seekers from frontline member states in 2026.
If far-reaching structural reform proves unattainable, the AfD plan says the German people should then decide for themselves, a formulation that could be read as an implicit last-resort reference to a referendum on EU membership, although Weidel did not raise that possibility at her press conference. Le Pen, once a strong advocate of France leaving the EU, gradually dropped the idea and shifted during her 2022 campaign toward reforming the bloc from within.
Belgian political scientist Dave Sinardet, who specialises in far-right parties, told Euronews that withdrawal is unrealistic. He said most radical-right parties have changed their position on the EU in recent years and that, after Brexit, no political force is seriously considering leaving. He added that the AfD is moving in the direction the National Rally has already taken, abandoning exit ideas as Le Pen abandoned Frexit.