Europeans ignore the need for migrants at their own peril

Giles Merritt says anti-migrant electoral victories bring a new political toxicity underlining the need for honesty on the EU’s demographics. 

When historians look back on pivotal moments that reshaped Europe, they may well choose 2015-16. Not Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nor the way Covid laid bare our economic weaknesses, but when immigration started to tear Europe apart.

Far-right populists have succeeded in inflaming voters across the EU, and now form an anti-immigrant bloc that threatens the Union itself. Member governments have generally made a hash of persuading voters that their economic interest is to rejuvenate and re-populate Europe through immigration and convince them that this far outweighs real or perceived social frictions.

The results of this failure are the two extreme right-wing groupings in the new European Parliament that threaten to disrupt and even distort the EU’s legislative process. ‘Patriots for Europe’ has 84 MEPs from populist parties and is the third biggest parliamentary group. There’s also the even more stridently anti-migrant ‘Europe of Sovereign Nations’ with 30 MEPs. As well as Germany’s AfD and France’s Rassemblement National, their members are from a dozen other EU countries.

EU governments seem to hope the populists can somehow be contained by ‘cordons sanitaires’ in the Strasbourg assembly and national parliaments designed to prevent mainstream parties from associating with them. This is not only undemocratic, but it’s also unlikely to stem the populist tide.

Doing nothing is no longer an option. It’s high time European governments (including Brexit-battered UK) faced up to the price of anti-migrant prejudice and launch a counter-offensive that spells out uncomfortable truths that voters perhaps don’t want to hear. Ageing Europe needs more migrants, not fewer. Furthermore, the alleged surge in irregular migration is a myth; it has been stable for almost 20 years. Experts recently reported that illegal migrants account for less than one per cent of Europe’s population since 2008.

Most EU governments have chosen to appease anti-migrant sentiment. The EU’s new pact on migration and asylum calls for higher walls for ‘Fortress Europe’ and tougher rules for asylum-seeking refugees. Hoping to draw the populists’ teeth, the political mainstream has adopted anti-migrant measures that the populists promptly dismissed as inadequate. They evidently failed to rob the extremists of this year’s slew of electoral triumphs.

History tells us that appeasement doesn’t work. It’s not as if governments are ignorant of why immigration is indispensable. Ageing will reduce the EU’s active, tax-paying population by 40 million over the next 25 years, dealing a heavy blow to consumer-led economies and ballooning the number of pensioners requiring expensive healthcare.

The EU’s present population of 446 million starts to shrink in the 2040s and, by 2100, is forecast to be down by 80 million people. Some demographers warn that once plummeting birthrates are factored in the present 27-member EU will number only 308 million people.

Newcomers either won’t work or don’t have the right skills, say critics of open immigration policies. In fact, two-thirds of the Union’s ten million non-EU citizens are in jobs and represent five per cent of the total workforce. That there’s a skills problem is true, but the real problem is that half of the economic migrants who possess skills end up in unskilled jobs.

Defusing the dangerously toxic politics around migration should be a priority. There’s also an equally pressing need to address the labour shortages that are handicapping economic growth. Three-quarters of companies polled in the EU complain of the serious lack of skills, up sharply on 42 per cent in 2018. Two-thirds of small and medium-sized concerns suffer from hiring difficulties that hit their profitability and expansion.

Immigration is undeniably a national concern, but by sticking rigidly to this EU governments have allowed anti-migration militants to pick them off one by one. Their concession to coordinating their immigration policies has been a series of patchy arrangements mostly honoured in the breach and not the observance. Increased EU funding for border controls won’t greatly diminish the tragic drownings in the Mediterranean or the English Channel.

Where Europe’s governments would benefit from a common stance is in explaining the growing need for more manpower. They would benefit from the political cover of a more positive collective approach to a problem that can only worsen as the wealth gap between Europe and Africa widens.

This shared view of immigration could promote the message that housing, educating and training newcomers isn’t a burdensome cost, but an essential investment. It’s a truth that Europe is ignoring at its peril.

The views expressed in this Frankly Speaking op-ed reflect those of the author and not of Friends of Europe.