Maximilian Krah sparked outrage after his comments were published last weekend in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

In an effort to subdue the backlash, Krah released a statement on Wednesday saying that he had resigned from the leadership team of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and as such would not attend any future campaigns.

Krah said that “statements from me are being misused as a pretext to harm our party. The last thing we need right now is a debate about me. The AfD must maintain its unity.”

The news comes as France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced her party would no longer be associated with the AfD.

“It was urgent to establish a cordon sanitaire,” she told Europe 1 radio on Wednesday morning, adding that the AfD “goes from provocation to provocation.”

“Now it's no longer time to distance ourselves, it's time to make a clean break with this movement,” she said.

According to polls, nationalist and Eurosceptic parties are expected to win a record number of votes with voters expressing their dislike of mainstream policies towards inflation, immigration, housing, and healthcare.

But the spat with Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party is just the latest incident in a series of setbacks for the AfD.

In January, the party faced mass street protests after two senior members attended a meeting to discuss plans for the mass deportations of citizens of foreign origin, and over allegations that it has Russian and Chinese agents in its ranks.

An aide to Krah was also charged with spying for Beijing, and last week a court ruled that Germany’s domestic security service could keep the AfD under surveillance for being a potential extremist party.