The assumption that cutting migration would deflate Europe’s populist right is unravelling in spectacular fashion. In Germany, asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level in years, yet the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has overtaken the centre-right Union parties in opinion polls for the first time. CSU leader Markus Söder recently conceded that taming the AfD has proved far harder than expected, leaving the conservative camp in a state of strategic bewilderment. The expected political reward for tougher border policies simply has not materialised, forcing a rethink of the long-held belief that migration numbers and far-right support move in lockstep.

Viewed from Madrid, the approach could hardly be more different. Spain’s left-wing government launched an extraordinary regularisation programme for undocumented migrants in late April, initially forecasting between 500,000 and 750,000 applications. With two weeks still to go before the deadline, the migration ministry has already received around 900,000 requests — nearly double the upper estimate — and has admitted some 360,000 for processing. The scheme grants legal residence and work permits for at least one year, aiming to bring informal workers into the formal labour market. Yet critics point to a striking inconsistency: Spain remains third from bottom in the European Union for granting asylum, with just over 144,000 requests registered in 2025, a 13.7 percent drop on the previous year. The “Spanish model” hailed by progressives across Europe is, in this reading, less a humanitarian embrace than a selective regularisation that sidesteps international protection obligations.

Sweden offers a third variation on the theme. Despite a conservative government that has pursued one of Europe’s toughest migration agendas, polls ahead of September’s parliamentary election show a clear leftward swing, with the Social Democrat-led bloc commanding 55.2 percent support against 42.6 percent for the incumbent centre-right coalition and its nationalist ally, the Sweden Democrats. At the same time, a dramatically sweetened repatriation grant — raised in January from 10,000 kronor to 350,000 kronor per person, or up to 600,000 for a family — has triggered a surge in applications: 608 people applied by the end of May, compared with negligible uptake before the increase. Officials note that some applicants express shame, but the numbers suggest that a substantial financial incentive can alter behaviour even when broader political winds shift leftwards.

Adding a further layer of complexity, economic anxieties are reshaping the political calculus in unexpected ways. In Germany, Friedrich Merz’s top investment adviser, former banker Martin Blessing, has warned that foreign investors view the left-wing Linkspartei as a greater threat to jobs and property rights than the AfD. Debates about expropriation and state intervention in the economy alarm boardrooms more than anti-immigration rhetoric, he told the Handelsblatt. This inversion of perceived risk underscores a broader truth: across Europe, the simple equation of migration numbers with political stability is broken. Governments from Berlin to Stockholm to Madrid are discovering that voters and markets are driven by a tangle of cultural, economic and security concerns that no single policy lever can resolve. The coming electoral season will test whether any of these divergent strategies can restore a sense of control — or whether the continent’s restless mood has deeper roots.