The co-leaders of Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, have agreed that Weidel will run as the candidate for chancellor in next year’s federal election campaign.
However, this is so far only an agreement between the two co-leaders, Stephan Brandner, an AfD member of the Bundestag, told dpa on Friday. This must now be confirmed by the party’s committees.
The Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland news outlet had previously reported that the federal executive committee and the federal-state conference plan vote on the selection at the beginning of December.
Weidel is not expected to be officially placed in the role until early next year.
The next federal election in Germany will be held in September 2025.
For decades, German politics has been dominated by two parties, the centre-right CDU, the party of former chancellor Angela Merksl, and the centre-left SPD, current Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party. But their grip on voters has faded in recent years.
The AfD party was founded by eurosceptics a decade ago, but has become more radical and firmly far right in its politics, especially on immigration, in subsequent years.
Mainstream German political parties have been refusing to work with the AfD.
The party’s leader in the state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, is a far-right firebrand who is well-known in the country for controversial remarks and has twice been convicted in court for knowingly using a banned Nazi slogan in speeches.
