No mass migration: European right-wing populists seize on Trump’s ‘decay’ claims

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London: Donald Trump has gained emphatic support from European political leaders who aim to seize or hold power by tapping into discontent on migration and social change, as they back his warning about the decay of their countries.

French right-wing leader Jordan Bardella endorsed the US president’s warnings about Europe and vowed to end mass migration if his party, the National Rally, increases its support and one day gains the presidency.

Jordan Bardella, president of France’s National Rally, left, wirth party leader Marine Le Pen.

Germany’s far-right party, the Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, is sending a delegation to the US this week to meet Trump supporters as part of what it calls a “conservative renaissance” that will stop migration.

The moves highlight the appeal of opposition parties that promise deeper cuts to the migrant intake than many national leaders, who are already trying to slow the numbers because of popular protests against asylum seekers.

The White House set off a fierce debate in recent days by issuing a national security statement that warned of a “civilisational erasure” of Europe because of mass migration, while Trump blamed weak leaders for destroying their countries.

Bardella, a potential candidate to replace French President Emmanuel Macron in 2027, said he agreed with the US president.

“To a large extent, I share that assessment,” he told the BBC in a podcast interview released on Wednesday.

“It is true that mass immigration and the laxity of our leaders over the past 30 years regarding migration policies are today disrupting the power balance of European societies, Western societies, and particularly the French society,” he said.

“And, of course, when you open the floodgates of immigration, then you bring in people. And through family reunification, you bring in even more people who also come with their culture, their language, their customs and their way of life.

“Look, I do not see France as a country that must be closed, but I believe that we must control our immigration, and I believe that tomorrow and the day after, France should no longer be a country of mass immigration.”

While Bardella did not name particular nationalities he wanted to turn away, he said he grew up in a region with a large amount of immigration from Africa and North Africa.

Trump named migrants from the Middle East and the Congo as examples of the problem in an interview with Politico that explicitly linked his concerns about European civilisation with the arrival of people from non-white cultures.

The European Union says 9.9 per cent of the 449.3 million people living in the bloc were born outside the EU. This figure does not include children born in the EU to migrant families. Migrants made up 10.3 per cent of the French population in 2021, the country’s statistics agency said, compared with 6.5 per cent in 1968.

Some European leaders deplored Trump’s remarks, with European Council President Antonio Costa urging the US president to show “respect” in dealing with allies.

The EU commissioner responsible for defence, Andrius Kubilius, said the White House security document reflected a school of thought in the US that believed a divided Europe meant a stronger America.

“Let’s hope that also today there will be enough prudence on American soil not to fight against the emerging power of European unity,” he said.

A draft version of the White House statement, reported by several news outlets but not verified by this masthead, is said to have gone further than the final document in seeking to split the EU. The reports said the draft named Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland as countries that could work with the US and pull away from the EU.

“And we should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life…while remaining pro-American,” said the draft reported online.

French police enter the water at Gravelines to try to stop migrants boarding small boats in June.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is seeking re-election next year, kept up his attack on the EU leaders in Brussels and named migration as a key issue.

“It’s about time for a change of direction in the faltering Brusselian command centre,” he wrote on X, without naming Trump. “There’s no shame in following those who have done things right. Be more like Hungary: secure, competitive, migrant-free.”

Political leaders are trying to toughen border policies without echoing Trump’s rhetoric or aligning themselves with a “Make Europe Great Again” variant of the US president’s movement.

The AfD confirmed to The Guardian that it was sending members to meet Republicans in New York and Washington this week.

“The AfD is fighting alongside its international friends for a conservative renaissance,” the party’s foreign policy spokesperson, Markus Frohnmaier, said.

While the AfD failed to gain enough seats to take power in the national elections in Germany this year, it is aiming for success in state elections due next year.

France’s National Rally, led by Marine le Pen and formed from the right-wing movement led by her father, Jean-Marie le Pen, is seeking to present itself as a mainstream party by rejecting the antisemitism of its earlier incarnation.

Bardella visited Israel in March and publicly condemned the “genocidal enterprise” of the Holocaust, while also paying his respects at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and the site of the Nova music festival massacre where Hamas killed Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.

French polling firm Odoxa found last month that Bardella, the president of ‌the National Rally, could win the presidency because 35 to 36 per cent of voters said they would choose him in the first round of the election. Still, Odoxa cautioned that candidates who did well in the first round had lost in the one-on-one presidential election.

Marine Le Pen was blocked from seeking public office for five years when a court found her guilty of misusing funds. She is appealing that ruling and could be the party’s presidential candidate if her appeal succeeds.

Macron is currently serving his second term and cannot run again.

Knowing that voters oppose high migration, the EU released new policies this week that aimed to harden borders against asylum seekers.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen went further on Tuesday by calling for changes to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) so authorities had more scope to reject asylum seekers.

Starmer is under significant pressure from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who met Bardella in London on Wednesday. Bardella promised to help a Farage government stop asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.

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