grist to the mills of the AfD? An appropriate migration policy is the right answer

After the Lower Saxony elections, the old debate about the right way to deal with right-wing populist parties has flared up again. The focus is on the question: If the established parties adopt their issues, will they steal voters away from the right - or will they make them even bigger because the voters would then prefer to vote for the "original"?

CDU leader Friedrich Merz is currently being accused of fueling the AfD's mill with his words about "social tourism" and the reference to the international appeal of our social system. Merz supporters, on the other hand, defend him with the argument that if you don't talk about people's concerns about immigration, you'll lose them to the right-wing populists.

Who is right? It is unlikely to be possible to provide scientific evidence on the matter. But if you look at three classically liberal countries in Europe, you will see a clear trend. In the Netherlands, first Pim Fortuyn and then Geert Wilders celebrated electoral successes until Prime Minister Mark Rutte's ruling right-wing liberals took up the issue of immigration and integration and acted politically. Today, Rutte is the longest-serving prime minister in the EU.

Denmark's Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen did a similar thing, thereby marginalizing the long-influential national-conservative People's Party. The most recent example is Sweden, where until recently there was consensus not to talk about the dark side of immigration. This led to steadily rising results for the right-wing Sweden Democrats, reaching 20.5 percent in September's general election.

The recent history of the Federal Republic also provides illustrative material. When the number of asylum seekers skyrocketed in the early 1990s due to the Balkan War and the disintegrating Soviet Union, the word “asylum abuse” made the rounds. The "Republicans" celebrated electoral successes, with 10.9 percent they managed to enter the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg.

At the end of 1992, Helmut Kohl's government, with the support of the opposition SPD, passed the so-called "Asylum Compromise", which led to an amendment to the Basic Law and a tightening of the asylum law. Immigration dropped drastically, and Republicans were soon no longer an issue.