Voters in Europe are more passionate about a crackdown on immigration than anywhere else in the world, and seem to be becoming more concerned as time goes on research shows.
Research undertaken by Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) the Alliance of Democracies — which regularly hosts major world leaders at its annual event in Copenhagen — has shown that people in nations across the EU are more passionate about controlling migration than anywhere else in the world.
The NGO’s data, which they say is the “world’s largest annual study on democracy, covering more than 50 countries and representative of more than 75% of the world’s population” dramatically underlines the degree to which Europeans want border control above other global regions.
Of the top 10 countries where members of the public said they felt reducing immigration is one of the most important issues to them, nine of them are European.
Austria is the country where people care about dealing with immigration the most, with 34 per cent of the general public listing immigration as one of their top 3 biggest concerns that they wanted their government to focus more on. This is up a considerable ten points in just one year.
This was followed by Germany at 31 per cent, the Netherlands at 30 per cent, France at 28 per cent and Sweden at 27 per cent. While the United Kingdom is near the bottom of European nations where voters are concerned by immigration, it is still up this year and is well ahead of the global average.
The research appears to reaffirm the long-understood but ultimately unrealised desire by Europeans to slow the rate of immigration, with large numbers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and others having been previously polled as holding these views.
Worldwide, the polling shows, the top interests for voters are reducing poverty and fighting corruption, with interest in both of those policies highest in Latin America.
Despite the fact that repeated polls over the last five years have shown that the general public across the continent are tired of on-and-off migrant crises, European politicians have basically refused to act on the subject, instead frequently making it easier for foreign arrivals to come to the continent.
The practice of ignoring the public on the issue of immigration appears to now be falling apart for many politicians across Europe, with populist parties advocating for border control surging in the polls in some European nations.
This is perhaps most visible in Austria, where the populist and anti-lockdown Freedom Party of Austria now the single most popular party in the country, with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Alice Weidel’s Alternative for Germany make serious gains in France and Germany respectively.