After his ejection from the Alternative for Germany delegation in the European Parliament, the MEP told POLITICO the party should seek to join another far-right group.

AfD party leaders hope the move to eject Maximilian Krah from their delegation on Monday will prompt ID to reconsider. | Jens Schlueter/AFP via Getty Images

Maximilian Krah, the scandal-plagued Alternative for Germany MEP, told POLITICO that his party’s efforts to rejoin the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament will be in vain.

“I will watch this attempt from an observer’s position,”  he said on the Berlin Playbook podcast. “I’m telling you right now, it will fail. After that, the cards will be reshuffled.”

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) delegation in the European Parliament is seeking to rejoin ID after being kicked out of the group following a series of scandals that damaged the AfD’s popularity and made it something of a pariah, even for far-right parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

The AfD’s ejection from the group came after Krah, the party’s lead candidate for the European election, told an Italian newspaper that members of the Nazi SS were not necessarily criminals.

Now, AfD party leaders hope the move to eject Krah from their delegation on Monday will prompt ID to reconsider.

Krah said he would not seek to join another far-right group on his own following his ejection from the AfD delegation.

“My colleagues believe that they have a better chance if they go without me,” Krah said. “And I think that’s a mistake, but I respect that.”

Le Pen has her own political considerations ahead of the snap legislative election in France. She has repeatedly distanced herself from the AfD, which has grown increasingly radical in recent years, in an effort to help transform her party’s image and make it appear less radical to the French electorate.

Krah suggested the AfD should look to form a new group with other far-right parties — and he hopes to be readmitted to the delegation when that happens.

“I maintain that there are many new right-wing parties in the European Parliament,” he said. “They are young, they are creative. They are by no means dirty. And we should actually have the courage to extend our hand to such parties that are looking to get close to the AfD.”

Krah has been at the center of a series of scandals. In April, German police arrested one of his parliamentary aides, alleging he spied for China. Shortly after that, German public prosecutors initiated preliminary investigations over allegations Krah had accepted payments from Russia and China.

Krah has denied wrongdoing.