Populist “anti-European” parties are heading for big gains in June’s European elections that could shift the parliament’s balance sharply to the right and jeopardise key pillars of the EU’s agenda including climate action, polling suggests.
Polling in all 27 EU member states, combined with modelling of how national parties performed in past European parliament elections, shows radical right parties are on course to finish first in nine countries including Austria, France and Poland.
Projected second- or third-place finishes in another nine countries, including Germany, Spain, Portugal and Sweden, could for the first time produce a majority rightwing coalition in the parliament of Christian Democrats, conservatives and radical right MEPs.
How would unfettered immigration (assuming it exists) cause an economic downturn?
If it did exist (and it doesn’t), it would be an excessive cause of government spending. Money that could otherwise be used to pay for other services like health or pension spending, or subsidize (read as: “cut taxes on”) necessary stuff like food or petrol.
I think their argument per se does make sense, it’s just the initial assumption that is flawed.
But “wasting” government resources on immigrants (those few that don’t work and as such don’t enrich the country they immigrate to) would only impact the economy if the health of the economy is reliant on government help. Just because the government is spending more, doesn’t mean the economy is worse… (often time it’s actually better off with government spending). Unless we see massive tax increases in such countries that will impact wealth generation and labor costs etc. I cannot see any negative impact on economic health.
Quite the opposite. Immigration usually helps fill in gaps in “economic planning” and the extra labor helps the economy. And increased government spending for the poorer groups of the population usually boosts the economy a lot more than tax cuts. So any negative economic impact of immigration has to overcome these positive ones.
That said, there are certainly other, non-economic reasons against immigration, but that wasn’t the point.