EU Parliament gives funds to Holocaust denier

Members of the EU Parliament sit in session. (Flickr.)

A newsletter titled Nation in Europa, published by neo-Nazi Thorsten Heise, received almost 35,000 Euros ($40,871)  from the European Parliament in 2018. Heise received the money from then-EU Member of Parliament (MP) Udo Voigt, who belongs to the right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). 

Heise has been arrested and imprisoned multiple times for violent acts of right-wing extremism, including trying to run over a Lebanese refugee with his car in 1989. In addition, he has been arrested for attacking a group of students at a graduation party in 1994, as well as for producing and spreading right-extremist music throughout the course of his life.

NPD staffer Karl Richter wrote one of the newsletter’s articles, which praised right-wing extremist Ursula Haferbeck, who claims that the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust never happened. She was  sentenced to prison in 2016 for her views, which violate Germany’s strict Holocaust denial laws. 

The newsletters also praised Voigt without explicitly mentioning him and his status as a non-attached MP, which is in violation of the EU’s rules on official publications. Other articles in the newsletter sharply criticized the European Union, Israel, and globalization, while praising authoritarian figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

The newsletters mark a return to the spotlight for Voigt, the former leader of the NPD, who faced legal challenges to his parliamentary immunity in 2015 for denying the Holocaust. 

The NPD currently holds no seats in the German parliament, any of the state legislatures in Germany, or the European Parliament, especially after Voigt lost his reelection in 2019. 

The party faced a severe existential threat in 2017, when a lawsuit seeking to ban the party appeared before Germany’s highest court. The justices decided that although the party indeed acted unconstitutionally and was closely associated with the ideas of the Nazi era in Germany, its lack of influence in politics meant that it presented no clear danger to society. The party was then allowed to remain in existence, where it has since lost influence.