The far-right threat that heightens Europe’s immigrant dilemma

The dust has more or less settled on the European parliament elections and the implications are becoming clear. It’s a substantial swing to the right, but not one that’s going to put the far or hard right in power in EU institutions.

The real impact is, of course, at national level where centrist French and German governments face an increasing threat from populist anti-immigrant parties on the right. Even if the current administrations remain in power, the Netherlands under Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the UK (both inside and outside the EU) under the Conservatives could testify that being harried by a populist opposition can drag a centre-right government towards hostility to immigration.

The rise of the right makes it harder for Europe to deal with its real migration crisis: the need for foreign workers. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has so far managed to square that circle by distracting from large-scale immigration with performative hostility to asylum-seekers. But for the UK’s Tory party, deservedly about to face electoral obliteration in the British general election of July 4, this strategy has run out of road.

The EU has created a refugee system, if we can dignify it with that term, that contrives to be cruel, illegal and ineffective all at once. When they’re not illegally pushing people back across borders or out to sea, EU member states pay north African autocracies to incarcerate them in brutal prisons or to dump them in the desert to die. The system doesn’t even work: more than 150,000 migrants reached Italian shores via the Mediterranean last year, 73 per cent higher than in 2022.

The political tone of the EU’s asylum policy is evident from the career of Fabrice Leggeri, former head of the EU border agency Frontex, which was accused of covering up and even encouraging pushbacks. Having been forced to resign, after a human rights and misconduct scandal, Leggeri popped up as a candidate for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) in the European parliament elections.

Meanwhile, Europe’s need for migrant workers becomes ever more obvious. The job vacancy rate in the EU, which drifted up during the 2010s, soared following Covid and has yet to revert to its pre-pandemic trend. It’s particularly acute in certain countries — Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany — where anti-immigrant parties are strong. Across the EU, there are particular shortages in construction and science, technology, engineering and maths occupations, both of which are needed to help with the green transition.

The EU’s attempts to create bloc-wide schemes to improve labour market efficiency by connecting immigrant workers to jobs are often just as ineffective as its asylum plans, though less malign. The EU has created a pan-EU “Blue Card” scheme for highly skilled workers, but only 82,000 such permits were issued in 2022, and 77 per cent of those by a single country, Germany. Employment remains mainly a national responsibility.

In the absence of any coherent plan, the best hope for countries with both labour shortages and political sensitivity to immigration is to practice gross hypocrisy and hope for the best.

Governments have long followed a strategy of ostentatious hostility to irregular immigrants and/or asylum-seekers while quietly admitting large numbers of foreign workers. The rise of nativist sentiment has heightened that contradiction. But short of being honest with their electorates or allowing whole sectors of their economies to grind to a halt, there’s not much else governments can do.

A hapless succession of Conservative prime ministers in the UK have tried to ride both horses, pursuing the inhuman, quixotic and so far entirely failed plan of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda while issuing large numbers of work visas, particularly in the care sector, and permits for university study. Responding to criticism over immigration from the right, the government felt itself forced to tighten up on student and care worker numbers, despite the damage to the UK’s world-class universities. The Tories have ended up with credibility on neither the economy nor immigration.

Meloni has fared better with a two-faced strategy. She remains high in the polls — and her Brothers of Italy party did well in the European parliament elections — despite doubling the number of non-EU work permits between 2022, the year she was elected, and 2025. Happily for her, this is at least welcome to her electoral base. Unlike populist anti-immigrant parties elsewhere such as the RN in France and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which draw backing from younger voters in economically depressed areas, Meloni’s core support is the wealthy industrial north of Italy, whose highly competitive businesses need workers. But she still faces criticism over immigration, and last week admitted Italy’s work visa scheme had been exploited by criminal gangs.

If the rise of the hard and far right in Europe spreads, it will worsen the political challenge of labour shortages. The RN and AfD are portraying the solution as the problem. Giving in to nativist prejudice will only make Europe’s growth challenge and perceptions of economic failure even more intractable.

alan.beattie@ft.com

Letter in response to this article:

EU economic nationalists are neither left nor right / From Eoin O’Malley, Associate Professor, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland