Alice Weidel, the long-shot chancellor candidate from the far-right Alternative for Germany, slammed the European Union for destroying the country’s auto industry and proposed winding back the bloc to a free-trade zone.
"What we need to have is free trade among the European countries, but we don’t need all the bureaucracy,” co-leader of the second-strongest party in German polls said in Berlin. The EU’s "socialist policy making” has "destroyed the market mechanism in Europe.”
As an example, Weidel — the AfD’s first-ever candidate for chancellor — cited Germany’s automotive sector, which she said had been "ripped off” by an EU ban on the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2035.
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