BERLIN

Germany's far-right AfD party came under mounting pressure on Wednesday after an aide of one of its most prominent lawmakers was detained on suspicion of spying for China.

European lawmaker Maximilian Krah's parliamentary assistant was accused by prosecutors of being “an employee of China's secret service” and carrying out espionage activities for years at the European Parliament.

Krah, who is also the AfD's lead candidate for the next month's European Parliament elections, told reporters on Wednesday that he will be terminating the contract of his assistant, but ruled out stepping down over the incident.

“The election campaign is now of course terribly overshadowed by this matter, which means that unfortunately people are now talking about China instead of Europe,” he said after meeting his party's top brass in Berlin.

Krah argued he had no personal misconduct, and is also interested in the clarification of the accusations directed against his parliamentary assistant.

“If you now believe that this is the end my role as the AfD's lead candidate in the upcoming elections then I have to disappoint you. I am and will remain the top candidate. It is now a matter of focusing the election campaign again on European issues and moving away from this really very unpleasant matter,” he told reporters.

Politicians from Chancellor Olaf Scholz's ruling coalition, as well as opposition parties, heavily criticized Krah and called for his resignation after media first reported on the scandal on Tuesday.

Social Democratic Party's (SPD) Secretary General Kevin Kuhnert said voters deserve to know all the details of this scandal, and Krah should now swear under oath that he has not given any information to foreign secret services.

"Otherwise, Krah would be better off in the Chinese People's Congress than in the European Parliament,” he told German daily Tagesspiegel.

The opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) demanded his immediate resignation after the spying scandal.

"It is absolutely out of the question to have a top candidate who has to deal with such accusations,” CDU's senior lawmaker Thorsten Frei told Rheinische Post newspaper.

Maximilian Krah's parliamentary assistant Jian G. Was arrested in the eastern city of Dresden on Monday, and judges ordered his pre-trial detention on Wednesday due to the severity of the allegations.

According to the prosecutors, Jian G. worked for AfD lawmaker Krah as an assistant at the European Parliament since 2019, and repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament to the Chinese secret service. He was also accused of spying on Chinese opposition members in Germany.