Two Thirds Of Germans
Want Borders Closed, Half
Say No More ‘Refugees’
Sean Gallup/Getty
by LIAM DEACON6 Apr 2016480
Two-thirds of Germans want their government to end open borders and almost half insist their country cannot take any more ‘refugees’.
Across most major European Union (EU) nations people are quickly losing faith in open borders, the survey by French pollsters Ifop found.
More than 60 per cent of Italians are against free movement, and 72 per cent of French people wanted some borders to be closed.
Rising sharply from just one-third in September 2015, now nearly half of people in Germany — 47 per cent — also insisted that it would not be possible to absorb any more ‘refugees’ given the million plus who walked into the country last year.
The number was even higher elsewhere. More than 60 per cent of both Italians and French people contacted by the pollsters said there was no possibility of taking in more migrants.
According to Ifop opinion research director Jérôme Fourquet, the results show the terror attacks in Brussels and Paris, “stoked the feeling that things have escalated out of control”,Süddeutsche Zeitung reports.
“Before, people always said that an end to Schengen would mean the beginning of the end of the whole EU,” Mr. Fourquet continued.
However, despite the sporadic controls that have already appeared on many European borders since the migrant crisis began, “Europe isn’t falling apart,” he claimed.
Terrorism and radical Islam certainly appear to be a large factor in changing attitudes across Europe: 79 per cent of Germans, 80 per cent of the French, and a whopping 84 per cent of Italians are now convinced some migrants are potential terrorists.
Germans, meanwhile, were understandably the most self-confident about their economy’s ability to pay for the large number of new dependents.
61 per cent of Germans said that their country was financially strong enough to cope with the crisis, but just 28 per cent of the French and 24 per cent of Italians were so confident.