Poll: Europeans Want National Governments, Not EU, to Decide Migration Policies

People in Europe overwhelmingly oppose the European Union’s (EU) handling of the migrant crisis, and want national governments to have final say over their countries’ migration policies, according to a new survey.

U.S. pollster the Pew Research Centre found three quarters of respondents said they want their own governments to make decisions on migration of non-EU citizens into their countries.

Across the bloc, 74 per cent overall said national governments should be in control of migration policies, with the figure highest in Hungary (82 per cent) and Poland (77 per cent), whose governments have boycotted the EU’s migrant quota system.

But the sentiment was shared in Western Europe among 75 per cent of French respondents, 74 per cent of Dutch, 70 per cent of people in Greece and 70 per cent in Sweden.

Pew reports that while in most of Europe, it is people on the political right who want border control back in the hands of national governments, in Spain it is people aged 18-29 who want to see migration powers repatriated to Madrid.

66 per cent of people across the bloc disapproved of Brussels imposing migrant relocation quotas on its member states.

Opposition to the EU’s handling of immigration was highest in Greece (91 per cent) and Italy (81 per cent), which have been on the front lines of the crisis with migrants arriving in boats.

People in countries which have taken the largest number of migrants were also dissatisfied with the bloc’s migration policies, with 59 per cent of Germans saying they disapproved, and 78 per cent of Swedes.

The EU announced last week that it would take legal action against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for refusing to welcome quotas of third world migrants assigned to them by Brussels.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said giving in and taking the more than 6,000 migrants allocated by Brussels would “certainly be much worse” for the nation than the threat of EU sanctions, citing the terror threat in Western Europe as a result of mass migration.

Speaking this week to condemn the EU’s decision to launch proceedings against countries for not taking migrants, iconic former president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus said withdrawing from the bloc is the only way to save the country from forced multiculturalism.