Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday rejected foreign interference in German elections after US Vice-President J.D. Vance told Europe to open the door to far-right parties.
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Speaking on the same stage at the Munich Security Conference, Scholz pushed back against Vance’s blistering speech from the previous day and defended Germany’s taboo against including the far-right in government coalitions.
Scholz, whose country is holding elections on February 23, said that “we will not accept outsiders intervening in our democracy, in our elections. That is not appropriate – especially not among friends and allies.”
Scholz started his speech by mentioning Vance’s earlier visit to Nazi Germany’s Dachau concentration camp near Munich, and the US vice-president’s commitment to “never again” allow such crimes to be committed.
The crimes of the Holocaust are the reason “the vast majority of Germans are firmly opposed to those who glorify or justify” the Nazis, Scholz said.
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This was something that members of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had done by trivialising Nazi crimes, the chancellor said.