Switzerland and the AfD: political, personal and financial ties

AfD supporters celebrate the outcome of September 2026 regional elections in Sachsen-Anhalt, where the party got almost 44% of the vote. Sebastian Gollnow / Keystone

As the Alternative for Germany (AfD) continues to gain support in its home country, its Swiss connections are also attracting some fresh attention.

Like most countries, Germany is keen to ensure its politics does not come under the influence of foreign meddling, including in the form of donations to political parties. As such, gifts from outside the European Union are capped at €1,000 (CHF918); anonymous donations are also not allowed. Oversight is mainly done by Germany’s parliamentary administration.

But should the country where illicit donations originate also take responsibility? In the Swiss parliament recently, the Green Party’s Andrea de Meuron askedExternal link just this – and referred specifically to the AfD, whose surge in popularity in recent years has sparked debates about the compatibility of its far-right positions with liberal democracy.

De Meuron cited the case of a contested €2 million donation, with alleged Swiss links, which the AfD is appealingExternal link in a Berlin court. The party was also fined in 2020 over a €130,000 donation from a Zurich pharma firm. “Such cases show that Switzerland acts as a ‘hub’ for illicit financing models,” de Meuron claimed. She wants the government to clarify what can be done to prevent them – as well as what they mean for the country’s reputation.

What can be expected? A justice ministry response to her question is likely during the parliamentary session starting November 30. But according to Odile Ammann from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland’s own political finance transparency rules, introduced in 2023, do not address financial flows leaving the country. That said, she adds, one “loophole” in the Swiss regulations – allowing “intermediary structures” to hide the origins of political donations – can also obscure the source of donations being sent abroad.

Due to the loophole, Ammann tells Swissinfo, “it would not surprise me if there were additional examples” – beyond the AfD – of illicit political funding coming out of Switzerland. She has previously recommended tightening the law.

>> How transparent is political funding in Switzerland compared to other European countries?

Small town life in Schwyz

Yet whatever the government’s answer to de Meuron, the AfD’s links with Switzerland go well beyond the question of financing, and have done for some years.

One of the most visible ties involves the residency status of AfD co-leader Alice Weidel. Though her political career is in Germany, a lot of her private life is centred in Switzerland. She has a home with her wife and children in Einsiedeln, canton Schwyz – a quiet place where she says she can “recharge her batteries”, far from Berlin’s pressures, as she toldExternal link the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper in 2025.

Yet while Weidel still also has a German address and pays her taxes there, her status as a “German abroad” – particularly at the head of a nationalist party – can raise eyebrows. And as the party continues to gain in popularity, scrutiny has intensified, the Blick newspaper recently wroteExternal link, noting that even AfD supporters aren’t overjoyed about their leader living abroad. Switzerland, meanwhile, is rather used to prominent foreign residents – although there have been questions about police security for Weidel. And in 2025, hundreds turned up in Einsiedeln to protest against the AfD.

The February 2025 anti-AfD protest in Einsiedeln also attracted counter-demonstrators, as well as plenty of police to keep the peace. Keystone / Urs Flueeler

Fans of the Swiss model

Weidel and her party also seem to have a clear – and often positive – vision of Switzerland. For example, as a place where things work well. In a recent interviewExternal link with the British Economist magazine, Weidel spoke of a “brain drain” from Germany, with people leaving the country due to what she claimed was insecurity, high costs, and a lack of prospects. “[People] rather work in the US, or Switzerland, or somewhere else, but not in Germany anymore,” she said.

More importantly, AfD figures see Switzerland as having successfully pursued goals that they themselves share: maintaining sovereignty in relation to the European Union, preserving a certain cultural homogeneity, or giving citizens more say through direct democracy. “Switzerland is one of our models,” the AfD’s Björn Höcke toldExternal link Blick in 2023. There is also here a “tendency to remove the country’s character, but common sense still prevails”, added Höcke, an AfD regional leader who has been convictedExternal link of using a banned Nazi slogan.

>> Swiss-style referendums and people’s initiatives are particularly appealing to the AfD:

Parallels with the Swiss People’s Party

Whether or not this “model” aligns with Swiss realities is more complicated. It does however align in parts with the model put forward by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, the biggest political group in Switzerland for decades. Often seen as a pioneer of right-wing populism in Europe, the People’s Party rose to prominence at the turn of the century with a combination of economic liberalism and sovereigntist demands. As such, it has also frequently drawn comparisons with the AfD – although direct parallels are difficult to make, not least because of the very different Swiss political system, based on consensus and the inclusion of all major parties, including the People’s Party, in governing.

It does seem that the People’s Party has long been on the contact lists of some top AfD politicians. In 2016, before the German party’s recent rise, its then-leader Frauke Petry spoke at an event in canton Bern run by the Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland, an isolationist group with close ties to the People’s Party. More recently, Weidel has been at People’s Party events in Zurich; former Swiss government minister Ueli Maurer even appeared by video at a 2025 AfD campaign rally. And according to trove of hacked AfD emails leaked in October, and reportedExternal link on by the SonntagsBlick, Weidel floated the phrase in 2017 of “making the AfD into a German version of the Swiss People’s Party”, before her spokesperson advised against it.

As for the People’s Party itself, it has talked down the links. It “maintains no official contact or exchange with foreign parties”, the party’s president Marcel Dettling told the Zofinger Tagblatt last year. And it’s not alone on this: the AfD’s far-right reputation has also led some other right-wing groups in Europe, like the National Rally in France, to keep their distanceExternal link from the AfD.

What is clear is that, comparisons of ideology aside, both the AfD and the Swiss People’s Party are currently reaching voters. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wroteExternal link after the AfD’s gains in September regional elections, both have managed to move beyond core themes like immigration to do something centrist parties aren’t managing to: bundle daily concerns like living costs or education into an overarching narrative that resonates with many.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl/ts

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