Jörg Meuthen

Jörg Meuthen (born 29 June 1961), a trained economist, is an MEP of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, who was chosen to lead the newly founded parliamentary group initiated by Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, European Alliance of Peoples and Nations. He is embroiled in the ongoing AfD donation scandal.

Biography

Meuthen is Roman Catholic and grew up in a working class neighborhood in Essen. His father was a businessman and arranged pension plans for a Mülheim company. He went to church until his first communion, and after a period of disinterest found his way back there: according to his own statements by way of the theological writings of the later Pope Joseph Ratzinger, whose reading he calls his religious socialization. From 1982 to 1989 Meuthen studied economics in Münster and Mainz and received in 1989 his degree in economy.

From 1989 to 1993 he was a research assistant at the Department of Finance at the University of Cologne and in 1993 acquired his doctorate with a thesis on church tax. After his graduation, from 1993 to 1996, he was a speaker in the Hessian Ministry of Finance. From 1997 onwards he was professor of economics at the College of Public Administration in Kehl. In addition, he had several teaching assignments in economics at the administrative and business academies in Karlsruhe and Offenburg. Since his election to the parliament of Baden-Württemberg in April 2016, he has reduced his teaching activities.

According to his own statement, Meuthen was interested in the neoliberal FDP in his late 20s, but deemed their attitude in the discussion about a long-term care insurance as too static. The decision to join the AfD he had taken on the evening of the 2013 general election. He was angered by the "arrogance of power" when Bernd Lucke was mocked by Wolfgang Schäuble in a popular TV talk show with Günther Jauch.1

He was rising quickly within the party's ranks. In the framework of an inner-party vote for the AfD leadership in July 2015 at a party convention in Essen Meuthen was elected as one of the two spokespersons of the federal party. The other spokesperson would become Frauke Petry, who won the race against the controversial Bernd Lucke.2

European Parliament

In November 2017 he joined the European Parliament as MEP for the AfD, and joined Nigel Farage's parliamentary group Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) parliamentary group.3

He was a full member of the following committees:3

29-11-2017 / 13-12-2017 : Committee of Inquiry to investigate alleged contraventions and maladministration in the application of Union law in relation to money laundering, tax avoidance and tax evasion
29-11-2017 / 12-06-2018 : Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
29-11-2017 / 27-11-2018 : Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality
05-02-2018 ... : Delegation to the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee

Furthermore he was sitting as a substitute member on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs since November 2017.3

AfD donation scandal

According to LobbyControl, Germany’s most important lobby watch group, the AfD received large anonymous donations in the past by using a legal loophole. German party law makes it obligatory to disclose the provenience of party donations up from 10000 Euro. The AfD bypassed this law by using a letter box association, the "Association for the Preservation of the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties" (Verein zur Erhaltung der Rechtsstaatlichkeit und bürgerlicher Freiheiten), founded in September 2016, to receive funds anonymously. These funds, amounting to at least 6 Million Euro,4 were used to bankroll newspapers ("Extrablatt", "Deutschland-Kurier"), billboards, Google ads and videos advertising the AfD.

The donors are not known so far but according to LobbyControl the ”AfD election campaign is likely to show the largest intransparent cash flow in recent years in favor of a single party” in Germany.4

According to the newspaper Die Welt with recourse to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung), the most important donor in the early days of the AfD was Mövenpick billionaire Baron August von Finck, who lives in Switzerland.5

The money trail leads to Switzerland in another way. Individual AfD politicians have benefited "directly from secret payments" by the Swiss PR agency Goal AG6 , which operates as a central actor behind the Association for the Preservation of the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties. In the past, Goal AG has led election advertising campaigns for the Swiss People’s Party SVP, and other European right-wing populist parties.7 AfD politicians such as Jörg Meuthen, Markus Pretzell and Guido Reil have received monetary benefits as well as free services (posters, websites, costs for events) by the advertising agency.4

With more and more details coming out in regards to the scandal, it could be established that the AfD used a system of straw men, to obfuscate the original source(s) of the donations. The Swiss Goal AG had compiled such donor lists, and at the AfD's request, "Goal AG had sent such lists to the AfD federal association for the questionable donation cases of AfD leader Jörg Meuthen and European election candidate Guido Reil."8

When confronted with the allegation, Meuthen stated that he had nothing to do with the advertising campaign and had not commissioned it.9 But in fact, an advertisement order at the newspaper Brettener Woche (Kraichgau) was accompanied by a declaration signed personally by Meuthen in which he assumed liability for the contents of the advertisement. Observers concluded from this that Meuthen at least knowingly approved of the activities of Goal AG.10 11

2018

In the end of 2018, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Jörg Meuthen won the race to be the party's leading candidate in the EU parliamentary election in May 2019.

2019

On 8 April 2019, Meuthen was holding a speech on the kick-off event of the Salvini-led new European parliamentary group, The European Alliance of Peoples and Nations, of which he is by now the leader. Formerly he was an MEP of Farage's Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group.

In his speech he was rallying particularly for a decentralization of the EU, as well as the establishment of a Fortress Europe:

"Matteo has already made it very clear what we want to do differently in this group: We want to reform the European Union from head to toe, but we do not want to destroy it. We want a radical change to the effect that the European Union should give competences back to the member states. We want much more power in our home countries and much less concentration of power in the bureaucracies of Brussels and Strasbourg. For example, we also want vital and powerful protection of the Union's external borders. We want to reduce illegal migration into the EU to zero. In the future, only those who have obtained our prior permission outside the EU's borders will be allowed in, and be able to enter the EU. If we want to preserve our Europe of the diversity of rich cultures and its extremely rich heritage - and I emphasise this with determination - then we will have to build a Fortress Europe into which we will only let those we are prepared to let in."12

>> (See the full translation of Meuthen's speech)

2019 EU Parliamentary Election

In the May 2019 European parliamentary election the AfD scored 10,5% of the votes, and will be represented by 11 MEPs in the European Parliament. Jörg Meuthen was not only the leading AfD candidate, but is now leading the around 77 seat strong "black block" European Alliance of Peoples and Nations.

Just one day after the election he was interviewed by RT, where he could - without interposed questions - spread some of the parties usual antagonist lies.