00:03Is Brussels trying to freeze EU funds to a German state that voted for the far-right
00:08Alternative for Germany party in an election in early September?
00:12That's what several posts are saying online, many with thousands of views, likes and shares,
00:17and often with a picture of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attached.
00:21They allege that millions and sometimes even billions of euros could be withheld from the
00:26state of Saxony-Anhalt, located in east-central Germany after it handed the AFD a landslide victory
00:33on the 6th of September. However, the 39 seats it won were not enough to command a majority,
00:38even though it got more than twice as many as any other party. It's since struggled to establish
00:43a coalition, however, as the other parties have refused to collaborate with it.
00:48Von der Leyen herself has repeatedly criticized the AFD in the past, and her own center-right CDU
00:53party suffered a crushing defeat, possibly fueling the suggestions online that she's
00:58behind the scheme to freeze the EU funds. However, there's no evidence that that's the case.
01:04Instead, the narrative seems to stem from a statement by Green MEP Daniel Freund,
01:09who said after the state election that 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 in EU funding as part of the current 2021-2027 budget.
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, over all of law and
01:39democratic backsliding concerns under previous governments. Some of them have since been released
01:44following reforms. Nevertheless, for now, the idea that this could happen to Saxony-Anhalt appears to be
01:50the opinion of a few MEPs, rather than a concerted effort by Brussels.
