A 'matter of principle': The Left's Walter Baier slams Von der Leyen for overtures to far right

Established parties are abandoning moral principles by embracing the far right's discourse on migration, the lead candidate says.

Transcript

00:00The European Union is risking its global credibility by applying different standards to its response

00:06to Israel's war in Gaza and Russia's war on Ukraine. This is according to Walter Beyer,

00:12lead candidate of the European left for the EU elections in June. In an exclusive interview

00:17with Euronews, the co-founder and president of the party lays blame at the door of the

00:21commission president. Ursula von der Leyen's initially uncritical support for the Israeli

00:26government has been misguided, he argues.

00:30Her behaviour is typical for the double standard. It's inadequate, it bears responsibility for

00:40that what is happening and it's also not honest because to blame everybody who is critical

00:48of the current Israeli government being an anti-Semite, it's wrong, it's unjust, it's

01:00unfair, it's against history, it's against reason. So, generally speaking, she dealt

01:07very badly and I see now they are saying something about Rafa, but they're saying it lately.

01:14However, Beyer is reluctant to go as far as Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of left-wing

01:18party La France Insoumise, which considers the situation in Gaza to be a genocide. LFI

01:24is not a member of Beyer's party but shares its leftist values.

01:29I don't like the big words. I mean, 35,000 killed people, two-thirds of them civilians,

01:37a large part of them being kids, destroyed cities, destroyed hospitals, a complete destruction

01:49of infrastructure. What would you like to call this? In my words, it is war crime, it

01:59is a tremendous crime towards humanity and we have to stop this. We have to stop this

02:06completely.

02:09In the interview, the 70-year-old Austrian politician also strongly condemns the recent

02:14statements made by the centre-right European People's Party about the far right. Listen

02:19to the entire interview on Euronews next week in our new edition of Global Conversation.