France has overtaken Germany as Europe’s top destination for asylum seekers. During the first quarter of 2025, France registered more than 40,000 applications, just above Spain (39,318) and Germany (37,387). This is a 41 per cent drop in German applications for the same period in 2024; Interior Minister Nancy Faeser attributed the fall to a ‘strong package of measures, Germany’s own actions and close European cooperation’.
Germany has been Europe’s destination of choice for asylum seekers since 2011. The country was considered the most welcoming, in part because of the impression cultivated by the former chancellor Angela Merkel, who issued an open invitation to migrants and refugees in 2015.
Successive British governments have claimed there is no ‘silver bullet’ for cracking the migrant crisis
Her successor, Olaf Scholz, continued this policy until the numbers became unmanageable; in 2023, a record 334,000 people claimed asylum in Germany. Last year there were a series of atrocities committed on German soil by asylum seekers – including the fatal stabbing of three festival-goers at Solingen – which prompted Scholz’s government to act. Among the measures introduced were tighter border controls and the restriction of financial aid to immigrants entering from another EU country.
In contrast, France has continued to welcome unprecedented numbers of legal and illegal immigrants under Emmanuel Macron. In 2023, 323,260 first residence permits were granted to non-European immigrants, a record, and 40 per cent more than the number of permits issued in 2016, the year before Macron came to power. The bulk of asylum seekers in France hail from Afghanistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Fondapol, a liberal French think tank, reported recently that each asylum seeker in France who can’t be housed in an accommodation centre receives €426 (£366) each month; in Germany it is €367 (£315), in Finland it is €348 (£299) and in Sweden it is €201 (£173). Furthermore, France is the only EU country where migrants are entitled to free medical care because of Aide Médicale d’Etat (AMS), a scheme that cost the cash-strapped French state €1.2 billion (£1 billion) last year. As Fondapol concluded: ‘France can now be considered the most permissive country in the European Union when it comes to asylum and immigration’
Britain would give France a run for its money were it still in the EU. For years, politicians and journalists in France have blamed Britain for the Channel migrant crisis, accusing their neighbour of being a soft touch. When five migrants drowned in the Channel last year, Jean-Luc Dubaële, the mayor of Wimereux (not far from Calais) said he held Britain responsible for the deaths. ‘If migrants want to go to England, it’s for a good reason: they’re well received, they can work without a work contract.’
The truth is that Britain and France are both seen as soft touches by the migrants and the gangs who smuggle them into their countries. Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Italy have all shown that with determination and a coherent plan it is possible to reduce illegal immigration and asylum applications.
In February this year, Denmark’s government announced that in 2024 it had granted asylum to 864 people, the lowest number in forty years (barring the Covid year of 2020). Denmark’s government is left-wing, but it has unashamedly pursued a tough line on asylum and immigration since it came to power in 2019. As Kaare Dybvad, Denmark’s immigration minister, put it:
If you’re from the left then you must have a strict immigration policy because it’s always the working class which pays the price of immigration…never the rich or bourgeois.
Instead of following the example of Denmark, the governments of Britain and France cobble together agreements that are rarely worth the paper they’re written on. In March 2023, Rishi Sunak and Macron met in Paris and, amid much fanfare, announced an ‘entente’ that would put an end to the scourge of small boats crossing the Channel. The scheme involved Britain handing France £480 million. Nearly 9,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats this year, a 42 per cent increase on the same period in 2024. Perhaps Britain should ask Macron for its money back.
Instead, the government is in talks with France about another great idea. This one would entail Britain returning small boat arrivals to France. In exchange the French would send to Britain ‘legal migrants seeking family reunion in the UK’. A spokesperson for France’s Interior Ministry told the BBC that:
[The scheme] is based on a one-for-one principle: for each legal admission under family reunification, there would be a corresponding readmission of undocumented migrants who managed to cross [the Channel].
There is an obvious flaw in the scheme: people coming to Britain for family reunions want to cross the Channel, whereas the illegal immigrants being sent back to France from Britain do not. It would therefore be a surprise if there weren’t lengthy legal challenges, similar to those launched when the Tories introduced their Rwanda scheme in 2022.
Successive British governments have claimed there is no ‘silver bullet’ for cracking the migrant crisis. There is, as Denmark has shown. It’s called the ‘Zero Refugee’ policy, and all it requires is a little determination.