United States Vice-President JD Vance addresses the audience during the Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, Germany, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

MUNICH (AP) — Germany’s defense minister pushed back hard against U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s complaints Friday about the state of democracy in Europe, saying nine days before his country’s election that it is “unacceptable” to draw a parallel between the region and authoritarian governments.

Vance lectured European governments about free speech in an appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, saying that he fears that it is “in retreat” across the continent.

“To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,” Vance said.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, speaking a couple of hours later, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.

“If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes,” Pistorius said. “That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning.”

Vance also told European leaders that “if you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.” He said that no democracy could survive telling millions of voters that their concerns “are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.”

“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” he said. “There’s no room for firewalls.”

Vance didn’t elaborate on that. But mainstream parties in Germany say they won’t work with the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. That stance is often referred to as a “firewall.”

Polls have put AfD in second place ahead of a national election on Feb. 23 with about 20% support.

Pistorius countered that “every opinion has a voice in this democracy. It makes it possible for partly extremist parties like AfD to campaign completely normally, just like every other party.”

He noted that AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, was on prime-time German television on Thursday night along with the other contenders.

Bue he added that “democracy doesn’t mean that the loud minority is automatically right.” “Democracy must be able to defend itself against the extremists who want to destroy it,” he said.

Another prominent center-left European politician, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, took issue with how Vance urged European officials to stem irregular migration in the same speech. Vance said the European electorate didn’t vote to open “floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.”

“He speaks as though we are not focused on immigration in Europe,” Gahr Støre said. “I mean, this is the big theme in every country, that we want to have control of our borders.”

He argued that Ukrainian refugees accounted for a significant increase in unvetted immigrants in recent years — and they were accepted “because there is a bloody war going on, which he did not mention, which I think is not really addressing reality.”

“I don’t agree with him that what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening in Russia, what’s happening in China is less important than the presumed loss of freedom of speech in Europe,” Gahr Støre said.