‘Political tomb’
Immigration is a “political tomb” where European governments are dying by wrongly trying to go toe-to-toe with rightwing populists, Spain’s former foreign minister told Barney Jopson.
Context: Populist and far-right parties are on the rise across Europe with anti-immigration policies that channel public angst over population change, but also stoke fear and perceptions of insecurity.
Arancha González, Spain’s foreign minister in 2020 and 2021, said it was fruitless for governments to ape the policies of anti-immigration populists because “there will always be someone who is tougher than the toughest”.
González, who served under Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, said governments should treat immigration as “a management problem” and lay down clear red lines on what they are and aren’t willing to do.
“Otherwise it is your political tomb,” she said. “We are seeing it with all European governments. Every European government encounters someone more radical on the right who eats into its political space.”
Sánchez is the last senior EU leader still advocating a liberal immigration policy. But angst over the rapid growth of Spain’s migrant population — and the rush of more than 70,000 people into a Spanish exclave in July — is fuelling support for Vox, an anti-immigration party.
At a press conference with Sánchez in Madrid yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron lamented the deaths of more than 140 people who tried to swim to Ceuta, and said Spain had been the victim of “an attack”.
In an apparent reference to Giorgia Meloni’s Italian government, which criticised Spain over Ceuta, Macron said: “As a European I am surprised that others have not shown solidarity, because they received that solidarity before, when they themselves were directly affected.”
González said parties such as Vox were promising European voters a return to an “idyllic utopia” that would never materialise. She argued that mainstream parties must respond with an alternative “vision for the future”.
With a Spanish general election due by next August, González said it was “not inevitable” that Vox would form a government in coalition with the larger, conservative People’s Party.