Agency Report –
Berlin – US Vice President JD Vance weighed in on German and European politics in a wide-ranging newspaper interview on Friday, and reportedly plans to offer pointed thoughts again during a highly anticipated speech in Munich.
Vance arrived in Germany on Thursday to attend the Munich Security Conference (MSC), where he is expected to represent US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision to gathered world leaders.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Vance said he will also tell European leaders to embrace the rise of populist anti-establishment politics, take hard-line measures to halt mass migration, reverse left-wing policies and embrace conservative traditional values.
Controversially, Vance said he would urge German politicians to break long-standing taboos and work with the far-right and staunchly anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Vance said he would also offer his support to US billionaire Elon Musk, a major Trump backer whose vigorous support for the AfD in Germany has stirred controversy.
Those comments drew a rebuke on Friday from the German government. Chief German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said he didn’t think it right that a German ally would interfere so intensely in domestic politics right before Germany’s February 23 election.
“There are political traditions in this country. And then it is a good custom for the citizens of a country to decide who they vote for and what their principles are and not let others give them advice,” Hebestreit added.
In Munich, Vance also plans to meet German conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz, whose centre-right bloc of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) lead the polls. But Vance will not meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Hebestreit described that decision as a scheduling issue and not a snub. He said “no matches” could be found in the schedules of Vance and Scholz.
Scholz is due to arrive in Munich on Saturday, after the US vice president’s departure.
Bavarian state Premier Markus Söder, the head of the CSU, also flatly rejected Vance’s comments about cooperating with the far right.
“We take every opinion seriously, but who we form a coalition with is up to us,” Söder told journalists on Friday, noting that the CDU/CSU has categorically ruled out any coalition deal with the AfD.
Vance also told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to chide other European mainstream politicians as well as he embraces a more populist strand of right-wing and anti-migration politics.
In the newspaper interview, Vance attacked mainstream European politicians for using what he described as Soviet-style vocabulary to overstate Russian interference in domestic politics.
Vance said a failure to crack down on migration would be more dangerous to democracy than Russian interference.
“I think, unfortunately, the will of voters has been ignored by a lot of our European friends,” Vance said.
By Michael Fischer, Jörg Ratzsch and Bryn Stole
