AfD Leader Alice Weidel Calls for Germany to Quit the Euro and Schengen

AfD leader Alice Weidel has said her party would seek to take Germany out of both the euro and the Schengen agreement if it entered the federal government, setting out one of its most far-reaching challenges to the country's existing European framework.

Speaking in ZDF's summer interview, Weidel also pledged to close Germany's borders and argued that the country had been economically stronger before adopting the single currency.

Euro Exit Returns to AfD Agenda

Weidel reaffirmed the AfD's commitment to leaving the euro, saying she still supported the position in the party's federal election program.

“Germany was significantly better off before the introduction of the euro,” she said.

She described the euro as an unstable and weakened currency and linked it to what she characterized as the broad impoverishment of working sections of the population.

Weidel said Germany no longer benefited from a strong currency and argued that the euro's weakening had cost ordinary households wealth.

Schengen Withdrawal and Border Closure

The AfD leader paired the currency proposal with an equally sharp shift on migration and border policy.

“We will close them, and we will leave Schengen,” Weidel said of Germany's borders.

She argued that open internal European borders threatened domestic security and said an AfD government would end Germany's participation in the Schengen framework.

Germany has already reintroduced border checks, despite Schengen's general principle of removing controls between participating states.

Harder Migration Policy

Weidel also called for an extensive tightening of asylum, deportation and citizenship policy.

She said Germany was experiencing excessive illegal migration and argued that the country no longer had sufficient legal certainty in the area.

According to Weidel, the AfD would increase deportations and reduce naturalizations.

She said the 1.3mn Syrians living in Germany would be returned to Syria under an AfD government, arguing that people whose grounds for protection had ended should leave the country rather than obtain German citizenship.

Attack on CDU and SPD

Weidel used the interview to escalate her criticism of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil's SPD.

She accused senior government politicians of misleading voters and said their policies were damaging Germany.

The AfD leader also attacked the CDU's refusal to co-operate with her party, describing the so-called firewall against the AfD as fundamentally undemocratic.

She predicted that the strategy would weaken the CDU and said the party would not win another federal election.

AfD Eyes State-Level Breakthroughs

Weidel expressed confidence that the AfD would soon enter government at state level before eventually taking power federally.

“We will govern in the first federal states,” she said. “And we will also govern at the federal level.”

State elections are scheduled for September 6 in Saxony-Anhalt and September 20 in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The AfD is polling above 40 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, according to the figures cited in the interview coverage, while nationally one survey by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen puts the party at 27 percent against 22 percent for the CDU.

Economic and Climate Policy

Weidel also reiterated the AfD's demand to abolish the planned ban on combustion-engine vehicles.

She framed the party's economic approach around avoiding state intervention and what she called prohibition-based policymaking, advocating instead for market and technological openness.

On climate policy, Weidel said climate change had always existed and argued that measures to address human-caused climate change were unnecessary.

Her comments placed withdrawal from the euro and Schengen alongside migration, industrial and climate policy as central elements of the AfD's program should it gain federal power.