Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, presented her party’s proposals for a major reform of the European Union. The reform plan was presented by Weidel during her visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“We would like to rebuild and reform the European Union. We would like to found the European Union on three major principles: the first one is subsidiarity, the second one is responsibility, and the third one is sovereignty,” she said in her speech in Strasbourg.
First pillar: subsidiarity
Power should reside as close to the grassroots level as possible. It is important to put the competences on the lowest level of decision-making. AfD doesn’t want a state, or the [European] Commission — that is not elected — to intrude and disturb people’s private life in decision-making.
“I’m an economist, and for me, the European Union is not a group of sovereign states any more,” Weidel said. She said that in sovereign states’ parliaments, leaders were elected, “and so the decision-making on the sovereign level should be made in the national parliaments and not here (in the European Parliament), to be very clear.”
“The European Commission is not elected but it has a legislative right of initiative, this is a huge disturbance of checks and balances of a democratic decision-making process,” she said.
Weidel accused the EU of failing to follow its own rules, for instance on sovereign debt and whether the European Central Bank should or can guarantee it, citing issues like this as questions of responsibility.
