Petr Bystron
Member of EU-Parliament
Petr Bystron
Petr Bystron has been a member of the European Parliament since 2024 and serves, among other roles, on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He is generally regarded as one of the highest-ranking foreign policy figures within the AfD. From 2017 to 2024, he was the AfD parliamentary group’s coordinator on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag. Since 2021, he has served as the party’s spokesperson on foreign policy as well as its representative in the Council of Europe and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
He was the first AfD politician to be officially received by a sitting president (Miloš Zeman) and the first European to be awarded the “Eagle Award” by the conservative U.S.-based Phyllis Schlafly Foundation.
Refugee from Communism
He was born in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, from which he f led to Germany at the age of 16 because of political persecution, a country where he was granted political asylum.
Thirty years later he faced similar persecution in Bavaria: during the 2017 election campaign, an illegal house search was conducted and it was disclosed that he was under surveillance by the Bavarian secret service.
In addition to these state reprisals, he repeatedly has been the target of attacks by left- wing extremists.
He is actively involved in supporting the politically persecuted. In 2018, with the help of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, he was able to free the journalist Billy Six from Venezuelan custody.
Parliamentary initiatives
Chairman and Election Winner
He is one of the founding members of the AfD. From 2015 to 2017 he was the party state chairman in Bavaria. He took over the party in a crisis and led it from 3,5% polling results to achieve the best election result of all western federal states in the 2017 federal election with 12.7%.
He founded the state committee for European and foreign policy (2013-2015) of his party and launched the higly reputable series of events „Consular Talks“.
Award Wining Publicist
Petr Bystron is an author and publicist. He won several creative competitions, including an essay competition held by the EU on the future of Europe. His articles on economics and politics have been published in renowned daily newspapers and magazines in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland.
In 2016, the University of Geneva published his anthology „25 Years after the Wall“ on the transformation processes in Central Europe with contributions from well-known scientists and politicians, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Polish President Lech Walesa and the economics professor and Czech President Václav Klaus.
His current book “Make Europe Great Again” contains portraits of leading conservative politicians such as Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Penn and Nigel Farage.
Father, Husband, Entrepreneur
Petr Bystron is married and has two children.
He resides in his constituency, Munich North, since more than 30 years. He graduated in political science at the Bavarian School of Public Policy and the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and was admitted to doctoral studies.
During his studies he was active as an entrepreneur and founded an international advertising agency, which he sold to a public corporation after ten successful years.
