With the Alternative for Germany’s (Alternative für Deutschland - AfD) success during the European elections 2014, Germany is the last of the European Union’s member states to break with the ‘permissive consensus’. This article is the first to study the new German political party’s EU-criticism by assessing its Euroscepticism in the run up to the elections. Addressing the question of how the AfD’s Euroscepticism manifests itself along different dimensions we consider all of the AfD’s programmes and speeches as well as press releases pertaining to the EU or Europe. Representing ´eurosceptical EU reformers´, the AfD’s Euroscepticism appears to be not ideologically founded. Instead, the AfD employs different dimensions of Euroscepticism strategically: When the political party is in the focus of public attention it expresses its most critical opinions on the EU; out of the citizens’ earshot it strikes a more conciliatory tone.
