AfD's Weidel calls for German exit from euro and Schengen Area

Alternative for Germany co-leader Alice Weidel on Sunday demanded that Germany abandon the euro currency and exit the Schengen Area while sealing its national borders, declaring that the economic union had impoverished households and compromised security ahead of crucial state elections.

"Germany was significantly better off before the introduction of the euro," Weidel said in a summer interview with broadcaster ZDF, arguing that the single currency had eroded household wealth and weakened the national economy. On migration, she stated: "We will close them, and we will leave Schengen," referring to German frontiers, while pledging to halt naturalizations and deport Syrians whose protection status has lapsed.

Electoral ambitions and policy platform

Weidel forecast AfD participation in government at both state and federal levels, citing polling data from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen that places the party at 40 percent in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of September 6 contests. "We will govern in the first federal states," she said, adding: "And we will also govern at the federal level."

The AfD co-leader reaffirmed her party's rejection of a planned combustion-engine ban and dismissed measures targeting human-caused climate change. She criticized both Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil's Social Democratic Party for excluding the far-right group from coalition calculations despite its rising support.