The Observatory of Public Attitudes to Migration’s team published a new report, “Impact of Public Attitudes to migration on the political environment in the Euro-Mediterranean Region” with the ICMPD. The main findings of the report are:

• As the European elections approach, academics predict radical right parties to win around 21% of seats next month. This would be only a modest increase over the 2014 elections, at which they won 18% of seats;

• However, if voters vote according to what they see as the most important issues for the EU, rather than for their country as they have in previous elections, this could be far higher;

• If the elections had been held just three years ago, radical right parties would almost certainly have won far more seats. The abating of the migration crisis has somewhat cooled concern about migration and thus potential support for such parties;

• The report explains how what citizens see as the most important issue of the day overwhelmingly affects how they vote, as well as the factors that cause individuals to see some issues as important and some as unimportant, and how this is dramatically changing Europe’s party systems and electoral results.

These findings were be discussed at a special event on “Europe’s turning point on migration? Politics, policy and predictions ahead of the 2019 European elections” at the Residence Palace, Brussels on the 7th May 2019.

Watch the video.