00:03Is Brussels trying to freeze EU funds to a German state that voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany
00:10party in an election in early September?
00:12That's what several posts are saying online, many with thousands of views, likes and shares, and often with a picture
00:18of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attached.
00:21They allege that millions and sometimes even billions of euros could be withheld from the state of Saxony-Anhalt, located
00:28in east-central Germany, after it handed the AfD a landslide victory on the 6th of September.
00:34However, the 39 seats it won were not enough to command a majority, even though it got more than twice
00:40as many as any other party.
00:42It's since struggled to establish a coalition, however, as the other parties have refused to collaborate with it.
00:47Von der Leyen herself has repeatedly criticised the AfD in the past, and her own centre-right CDU party suffered
00:54a crushing defeat, possibly fuelling the suggestions online that she's behind the scheme to freeze the EU funds.
01:01However, there's no evidence that that's the case.
01:04Instead, the narrative seems to stem from a statement by Green MEP Daniel Freund, who said after the state election
01:10that it pushed to freeze EU money flowing to an AfD-led government
01:14if they violated any European values or misused funds.
01:18Saxony-Anhalt is built to receive 2.95 billion euros in EU funding as part of the current 2021-2027
01:27budget.
01:28Freund highlighted that the EU had used similar freezing measures in the past in Poland and Hungary.
01:33Brussels did indeed block money intended for those countries a few years ago,
01:37over all of law and democratic backsliding concerns under previous governments.
01:42Some of them have since been released following reforms.
01:46Nevertheless, for now, the idea that this could happen to Saxony-Anhalt appears to be the opinion of a few
01:51MEPs, rather than a concerted effort by Brussels.
