Via Remix News,For the first time in European history, an EU party alliance could be outright banned in the European Parliament, which would mark a major blow to democracy and rule of law.The Europe of Sovereign Nations Group (ESN), which includes nine right-wing European parties, has been relentlessly attacked by the EU establishment since its founding in 2024. The ESN’s largest party member, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has also been the target of efforts for an outright ban at the national level in Germany. While left-wing and establishment parties are struggling to implement a ban on the AfD in Germany, at the European federal level, democratic checks and balances and the rule of law are far weaker.Now, the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF) is seeking to de-register the ESN, which would strip it of all its funding and de facto lead to the end of the party.German MEP Alexander Sell of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is a founding member of the ESN and has since become the president of the Sovereignty Foundation (SF), the foundation formally associated with the ESN. He said he is speaking as the president of the SF and discussed the efforts his party is taking to fight this de-registration, how much of the APPF’s actions are an extension of the political warfare being waged against the AfD at the national level, and even touches on his own personal motivations for participating in politics as an AfD member despite the massive degree of personal attacks and even physical threats.There is a lot of discussion about your party facing a potential ban from this European watchdog [Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF)], but how realistic is it that your party will actually be banned in the near future?It’s a realistic scenario because the authority — the European Authority for Political Parties and Foundations (APPF) — has the power to de-register parties. They register European parties and they also have the authority to de-register a European party, and that is what they are planning to do.They have a couple of accusations against us. They have a 300-page dossier on our party.So they will start the investigation, but they will give us the chance to answer the accusations. And then they have the authority to ban our party.And do you have any idea of what the political leanings of the people in this watchdog are? Does your party view a negative outcome as already a foregone conclusion?Well, there are some indications that this is a political maneuver, because the director of this authority, [Pascal Schonard,] is German and he used to work for the CDU. He was a member of Klaus Welle’s cabinet. For almost a decade, Klaus Welle was Secretary-General of the European People’s Party and the EPP–ED group in the European Parliament.So I think there are political intentions behind this attempt to de-register our party. But still, I don’t think it is 100% guaranteed, because in the end you have to acknowledge that on the European level there are many parties like ours. There is a shift to the right all over Europe.You have governments — for example in Italy, the Czech Republic or Slovakia — that are led by patriotic forces. So I don’t think it will be that easy.The majorities in the European Parliament are also shifting to the right because that is what voters want.They want patriotic, realistic and more free-market-oriented policies, and that is what we are seeing on the European level. We want to get rid of bureaucracy, we want to get rid of climate policy, we want to secure our borders — and we have majorities for that.So I think this attempt to ban our party will not be easy, because European voters are demanding something else.I mean, you have to take into account that the AfD is the strongest political party in Germany, polling at around 29%, which is a large margin ahead of the CDU. So I think it will be very controversial to ban our European party.But what real checks and balances are there if they move forward with a ban? Would you appeal?Yes, we will appeal the decision by the authority. Definitely. And I think we have good reasons to appeal, because what they are accusing us of is that we are not respecting European values. Well, I don’t agree with that. We are very democratic — the AfD is very democratic. Our partner parties from other countries are very democratic. We would never come up with the idea of banning political competition. That is not how we work. We are working for democratic majorities.So I think we are respecting European values of democracy in a more serious manner than other parties. Also, talking about the rule of law: we have always criticised the European Union for breaking its own laws. For example, in the attempt to rescue the euro and in the migration crisis, they violated the laws that the EU itself had decided on — and that is what we have criticised from the beginning.So I would say that we are actually the defenders of the rule of law within the European Union, and those are the arguments we will bring forward in court if we have to appeal the decision by the European authorities.So, during this appeal process, would your grouping be banned right away or would it continue to exist during the appeal?The authority has the right to ban or de-register a party. So from the moment the authority takes a decision, our party is banned.The efforts at EU level almost seem to mirror what is happening in Germany itself. Do you feel that this is simply an extension of what is already happening in Germany?Yes, definitely. I think this is the easier route for them than banning the AfD at national level. There is less attention on the European political party, and in Germany they would need a decision by the Constitutional Court, which is harder to obtain than a decision by the APPF. So I think they chose to attack us at the European level.There is also still no money for an AfD political foundation, even though this is normally standard for any political party of our size in the Bundestag, right?Talking about the political foundations, just to give you an idea of the amounts involved: around 700 million euros per year is distributed to the political foundations of the CDU, SPD, the Greens, the liberals and the Communist party (editor’s note: Left Party).