Leaked internal communications have exposed what Manfred Weber and his European People's Party long denied: structured cooperation with far-right parties, including the German AfD, on migration legislation in the European Parliament.
The revelations, reported by Deutsche Presse-Agentur, document coordination through WhatsApp groups and in-person parliamentary meetings to advance legislation enabling deportation of asylum seekers to so-called "Return Hubs" outside the European Union. Among those voting for the resulting measure: AfD parliamentarian Mary Khan.
The chats directly contradict public statements from Weber and his allies denying far-right collaboration. At the end of last year, Weber stated it was "important to me that there is no structured cooperation with radical-right parties" in the Parliament. CDU parliamentarian Lena Düpont similarly claimed "there was no structural cooperation with the AfD and other far-right forces" on migration votes.
The documentary evidence suggests otherwise.
For German politics, the contradiction runs deeper than European coalition mathematics. The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU—Weber's own political home—have maintained a strict firewall against AfD cooperation domestically. Yet in Brussels, that same Weber has orchestrated exactly the kind of far-right coordination German conservatives claim to reject.
In Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, consensus takes time—but once built, it lasts. The question now is whether the consensus against normalizing far-right parties can survive when German conservatives practice in Brussels what they preach against in Berlin.
Weber declined to comment on the leaked communications. His spokesman said only that internal procedures would not be discussed—notably avoiding any denial of the allegations.
The Austrian FPÖ was also named among the far-right parties involved in the coordination, underscoring how the cooperation extended beyond Germany's AfD to multiple nationalist movements across Europe.
The timing compounds the political damage. German center-right parties face increasing pressure from voters concerned about migration while simultaneously trying to prevent AfD normalization. The revelations suggest the firewall exists more in rhetoric than reality, at least at the European level.
