Germany
Alternative for Germany: The party, started three years ago as a protest movement against the euro currency, won up to 25 per cent of the vote in German state elections in March, challenging Germany’s consensus-driven politics. In September, the party took second place in the legislature in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the home state of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The party attracts voters who are “anti-establishment, anti-liberalisation, anti-European, anti-everything that has come to be regarded as the norm,” said Sylke Tempel of the German Council on Foreign Relations. Frauke Petry, 40, the party’s leader, has said border guards might need to turn guns on anyone crossing a frontier illegally. The party’s policy platform says “Islam does not belong in Germany” and calls for a ban on the construction of mosques.
France
National Front: It’s a nationalist party that uses populist rhetoric to promote its anti-immigration and anti-European Union positions. It favours protectionist economic policies and would clamp down on government benefits for immigrants, including health care, and drastically reduce the number of immigrants allowed into France. It was established in 1972; its founders and sympathisers included former Nazi collaborators and members of the wartime collaborationist Vichy regime. The National Front is now led by Marine Le Pen, who took over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011. She has tried to soften the party’s image.
— New York Times News Service
