Europeans — especially Germans — are increasingly keen on curbing immigration and are less focused on climate change, according to a study by a Danish-based think tank.
Europe has seen a sharp rise in the share of people who say that reducing immigration should be a top government priority, according to a study published Wednesday. Germany is topping the list.
At the same time, there was less desire to prioritize fighting climate change in the same countries, according to the survey commissioned by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation think tank.
Nearly half of German respondents put focus on migration
Since 2022, an increasing number of Europeans say their government should prioritize “reducing immigration,” rising from just under 20% to a quarter.
Meanwhile, concern about climate change was on the slide across the continent.
“In 2024, for the first time, reducing immigration is a greater priority for most Europeans than fighting climate change,” the report said.
“Nowhere is this reversal more striking than in Germany, which now leads the world with the highest share of people who want their government to focus on reducing immigration — topping all other priorities — and now nearly twice as high as fighting climate change,” the report read.
And Germany’s population, and with that the economy, would start shrinking without immigration. That’s what a fertility rate of 1.7 gets you. Things would go downhill fast enough.
People would just start blaming the politicians for the rampant inflation and reduction in services that a scarcity of workers creates, and then vote in some fascist to “fix” it, first and foremost without allowing immigration. He will overthrow the media and judiciary and “fix” it by starting wars with the neighbors or doing ethnic cleansing at home.
All countries are going to go sub-replacement within a couple of decades. Aside from our constant inability to reform the pension system Germany is actually in quite a good spot: Those 1.7 are very stable, there’s no grand fluctuations, and no real reason to suspect it will suddenly crash. It’s a rate which, yes, leads to a degree of gerontocracy but it’s not catastrophic for the economy or pension system in the sense that improvements in productivity can make up for it.
I suspect it will rise again and then hover around 2 but for that to happen spooks like climate change related hesitancy will have to go (will happen with time, the earth can easily sustain the overall projected population levels) and the sources of immigration will have to dry up to a noticeable degree, which will also happen with time.