Why doesn't the EU steal the extreme-right's favorite topic?

LinkedIn blog post, 03/06/2025, by Sven Franck (en français , in Deutsch)

TL;DR - Another day, another snap election. This time, Geert Wilders blew up the Dutch (far-)right coalition over its unwillingness to support his 0-Asylum initiative. All things equal, we will again have to bear through a campaign on... guess what? Immigration. Are there no other urgent topics?

Quick numbers check: 📊 Eurostat says, 8.5% of the population in the 🇳🇱 Netherlands is non-national, half from non-EU countries. It's 14.5% in 🇩🇪 Germany and in 🇵🇱 Poland, whose presidency was also decided over fear of immigration, it's 1.2%. Probably also suspected of eating polish dogs. Meanwhile the birthrate in the Netherlands is at 1.4 (kids). A stable population and economy requires 2.1, so the question really should be: is the extreme-right "degrowth"? Or how much wealth are you willing to give up for zero immigration?

Considering the finger-pointing between member states, how we occupy bureaucracies with redundant and duplicate tracking, tracing and request handling within Schengen and how the extreme-right milks the topic to the detriment of everything really worth talking about, I think that the EU should just propose to relieve member states and take over the topic altogether. Because subsidiarity.

Imagine: external border protection, central registration, one procedure, allocation to member states based on actual demand (!) with a solidarity quota in case necessary. Why should Italy do it? No more Dublin. Germany? Needs 400 000 immigrants per year anyway. Orban? No need to take anyone (though last time I checked, Hungary was recruiting workers from Mongolia).

Imagine some more: once the topic is a national non-topic, we could finally have elections focusing on real issues: the economy of the future, oh hey climate change is still here, affordable housing, digital transition. We can easily fill an electoral agenda and might end up with several positive options to choose from - in 🇳🇱 including Volt Nederland and Laurens Dassen. All made possible by empowering the European Union to do what it was made for in the first place. #jumpstartEU.