Alice Weidel: Romania’s foreign ministry has drawn a necessary line in the dispute over Romanians in Germany. On Wednesday, the ministry rejected the political use of Romanian citizens’ presence in EU countries after the AfD leader said migrants from Romania were “plundering” Germany’s welfare system.
Weidel made the remarks on 28 October. She cited social spending in Magdeburg that she said had risen twentyfold to €3 million a year, linking to an MDR documentary about some families from Romania. But that is a political claim about a very broad national group, not proof in the supplied material that Romanians as a group are “plundering” the system.
The foreign ministry’s response matters because it makes that distinction. It said it monitors public positions affecting the Romanian community in Germany, described that community as making a major economic and social contribution, and said it uses ongoing diplomatic dialogue to convey reactions to discriminatory statements. This is not a new German welfare measure or a ruling on any case in Magdeburg. It is an official objection to collective political blame.
Possible misuse of welfare benefits is a legitimate matter for authorities to investigate. It does not, however, make a documentary and a local spending figure a verdict on an entire community. MEP Virgil Popescu also cited figures of 519,200 Romanians working under contract in Germany and 4,668 Romanian doctors. He attributed them to German institutions, but the primary documents are not included in the supplied material, so this article cannot independently verify the comparisons on unemployment, basic support or fraud.
The defensible conclusion is therefore narrow: the Romanian foreign ministry was right to answer a political generalisation, while the factual dispute over spending, eligibility and any fraud requires complete, comparable and verifiable data. The next development to watch is whether Weidel responds to calls to withdraw the statement and apologise, and whether primary data emerge to assess the Magdeburg claims.
Sources
- HotNews · Source date: 2026-11-04
- Digi24 · Source date: 2026-11-04
- Digi24 · Source date: 2026-11-04
- HotNews · Source date: 2026-11-04
Independent editorial content. WUA is not affiliated with any political party. 2026-11-04