Alternative Democratic Party (ADR) deputy Fernand Kartheiser congratulated Donald Trump when he won the presidency. On Friday morning, Kartheiser told RTL in an interview that he does not agree with Trump’s trade policy. He added that he also disagrees with the US president’s requests for Europe to invest more in their defence systems. However, the ADR politician asserted that he is favourable to Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy. He called it a “peace policy”.
Even though the United States are conducting negotiation talks with Ukraine and Russia, the latter killed 35 civilians and injured hundreds more in Sumy. Fernand Kartheiser called the tragic event an “incident”, which he regrets yet he does not comment on it. According to him, “opinions” are too divided. He raised awareness to the resignation of the local governor, who had permitted a military gathering on the day of the attack in Sumy.
Fernand Kartheiser emphasises how “the legitimacy of the objective is debatable”. Furthermore, he asserted that Russia is not attacking Ukraine “indiscriminately”. He reproached the media (including RTL) for defending “war-related arguments”, whereas ADR favours peace negotiations. Kartheiser pointed out that the new US government is no longer considering the war a Russian attack, but rather a “proxy war”.
On the topic of who had started the war, the ADR politician mentioned that the US recognised a shared responsibility. After the interviewer mentioned Ukraine giving their nuclear weapons to Russia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Fernand Kartheiser argued: “Those were not Ukrainian nuclear weapons, they were soviet”. The history between Ukraine and Russia did not start on 22 February 2022 – tensions have always been prevalent, notably due to Western influence.
The EU deputy laments that Europe is still defending the same views as former president Biden. Kartheiser defined the warnings concerning a potential attack orchestrated by Russia against a NATO country as “illusory”. The politician took a further stand on hybrid attacks and concerted influence on electoral campaigns, stating: “We do that too”.
Above all, he wholeheartedly disagrees with Donald Trump’s trade policy and the taxes imposed on European imports. Moreover, the EU deputy did not agree with the US President’s appeal to European member states, pressuring them to invest 5% of their national wealth into defence systems. He is completely against an “arms spiral”, preferring to negotiate “trust-building measures” with Russia, in order to reduce military interventions. As for the United States, who spend more on defence than the next 10 countries combined, Fernand Kartheiser states he is not responsible for their defence policy.
Due to Kartheiser’s opinions on the Ukraine war published in an interview in a Russian magazine in 2024, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – of which Kartheiser is part of – requested further explanation. In the interview, he referred to the ADR electoral program, which clearly prioritises peace negotiations.
The politician is “slowly receiving the impression that the ECR’s political positions are becoming more and more compatible”. However, he does not know “what the future will bring” or whether the “conflict” they had with ECR will be entirely resolved.
The only thing he is sure of is ADR’s commitment to their election promises, even if “that means leaving the ECR, which we do not want to or seek to do”.
Fernand Kartheiser “feels sorry” that people have left ADR throughout the years. Former ADR deputies Jacques-Yves Henckes and Jean Colombera left the party 12 years ago, as it was becoming too conservative, religious, and skeptical of the EU. One and a half years ago, Roy Reding also left the party, and recently Robert Mehlen voiced his desire to step away, citing the party’s stance on the Ukrainian war as the reason.
Nevertheless, these resignations are “normal” according to Kartheiser, because the party did not have “a clear political orientation” at the beginning. Throughout the years, they have fortified “a political profile and program”, which happened “democratically”.
When asked whether these developments demonstrate ADR’s further tendency towards a more right-wing, conservative, and religious party, the politician refutes these claims. As a party president from 2012 to 2013, he confirmed that the party had also been “leftist” at times. He pointed to pensions, the index rates and the healthcare system. However, their tendency towards the left stops when it comes to wealth and large salaries: Fernand Kartheiser believes the state has enough money, thus tax increases are “neither social nor useful”.
