Europeans view immigration with increasing suspicion. Seven out of 10 Europeans believe that their country takes in too many migrants, according to a survey carried out by BVA Xsight for ARTE Europe Weekly, a project led by the French-German TV channel ARTE GEIE and which EL PAÍS has participated in, as part of the countdown to the European elections in June.
The survey shows that 85% of respondents feel the European Union needs to take more action to combat irregular migration. And only 39% believe that Europe needs immigration today.
The countries where most people consider immigration a problem are Bulgaria (74% of respondents), the Czech Republic (73%), Hungary and Cyprus (68% in both cases). Paradoxically, in Italy, the European country where the largest number of immigrants entered irregularly last year (157,652), only 44% of respondents viewed it as a problem and only 14% saw it as the main problem. In Greece and Spain, the second and third countries with the most irregular arrivals in 2023, respectively, only 11% of respondents considered it the issue of most concern to them, below the European average of 17%. However, Greece is the country where the most people (90%) believe their country takes in too many migrants.
If you’re familiar with copy-left licensing then short term my fix is to start encumbering properties with perpetual clauses prohibiting non-natural person ownership. I think if we could get a few sellers to start including such a clause it’d become popular extremely quickly - people selling their home or their parents home don’t want to see it turned into a perpetual airbnb for a Saudi investor… the majority of people selling homes want that home to be used by a new family - these are extremely precious things for us.
Additionally, we need to attack NIMBY zoning laws that prevent densification to super charge housing prices… this one is harder because most homeowners don’t want their neighborhood densified so we’d need to remove power from local zoning boards and let federal or provincial governments have more control.
This I agree with 110%. It’s difficult to attack these things in my country as home ownership is one of the few ways to build wealth and people will fight back. As it stands i don’t mind to keep renting on the short term because I see the government doubling taxes or more on homes, but my rent has also doubled. Our politicians fix so far has been to promise to spur into action home building, but they are building Luxury homes…