Direct Democracy for Europe

[1][2] Oertel, a freelance business consultant from Coswig, Saxony, near Dresden, was previously the second most prominent spokesperson of Pegida.

It calls itself a "reform movement" and places itself "to the right of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany", the centre-right party of Chancellor Angela Merkel,.

[3] The activists of DDfE focus on demands for more direct democracy and tend to avoid overt anti-Muslim statements.

Oertel was quoted in The Guardian as saying, "We had a real fear that the discontent in Germany could end in civil war, and we wanted to avoid that.

The group drew scorn from the German press for posing in front of a map of Europe that depicted Germany without its northernmost federal state, Schleswig-Holstein (which was attached to Denmark instead), and that featured non-European Union members Ukraine and Belarus while excluding EU member Greece and EU candidates Montenegro and Albania.