Look to Italy to see how the dangerous idea of remigration is taking root in Europe | David Broder

theguardian.com · Feb 26, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Meeting Tommy Robinson earlier this month, the French anti-immigration politician Éric Zemmour bluntly summed up his mission: “Politics needs to defeat demographics.” Given rising numbers of Muslims, he said, there was perhaps “10 to 20 years” left to save Europe from “disappearing”. Both men placed their hopes in one policy to reverse the “invasion”: remigration.At root, remigration means using mass deportations in order to curtail minority – especially Muslim – populations. In France’s 2022 presidential election, Zemmour pledged the creation of a “ministry of remigration” meant to remove “1 million” people, targeting undocumented and dual-national criminals. In practice, supporters of the idea often blur distinctions between criminals and non-criminals, longer-standing citizens and recent migrants, the undocumented and those with settled status.The rising remigration discourse needs to be understood in the context of the far right’s electoral march across Europe. Once in power, or close to it, parties from Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) have been accused of going soft by the more extreme fringes of the right. (After all, even liberal media often suggest that their leaders have deradicalised, becoming more like traditional conservatives.) The more extreme right then ups the ante, popularising drastic and inhumane ideas – like remigration.While this might suggest a profound split running through Europe’s rightwing forces, the truth is that even talking about remigration is a sign that the far right – in its more extreme and “mainstream” variants – is winning.The call for remigration has spread far beyond small extremist circles. In Germany, it was embraced ahead of last year’s election by Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), today leading national polls. In July, the official party platform dropped the word “remigration”, after courts ruled the idea unconstitutionally discriminatory against even German citizens. Yet AfD state chapters and politicians have notably maintained warm relations with the pro-remigration Austrian ethno-nationalist Martin Sellner, who met AfD lawmakers to discuss the policy in a state parliament last month. In Italy, the deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s League became the first governing party in the EU to embrace “remigration”.Italy – the birthplace of fascism – especially shows how once-marginal ideas can gain traction. Eight months after heated protests over a “remigration summit” held near Milan, the idea came to parliament this January. With the help of League MPs, representatives of neo-fascist groups CasaPound and Veneto Fronte Skinheads scheduled a press conference to launch a public petition that would force parliament to debate remigration. Ultimately, the event was blocked by leftwing MPs, who occupied the room and sang anti-fascist anthem Bella Ciao.There surely are tensions within the right over this idea. The petition’s organisers, who have now gathered 114,000 signatures, hope to force a referendum – and, if the governing parties don’t allow it, to denounce their inaction. Meloni’s party has long warned against migrant “invasions” and “ethnic substitution” but is unlikely to accept the call for a referendum insofar as it doesn’t want the political initiative to be dictated by small extraparliamentary groups. For Salvini’s League, which trails far behind Meloni’s party in polls, posturing around remigration offers red meat to its activist base, placing it to the right of the prime minister.Giorgia Meloni at the Vatican, 17 February 2026. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty ImagesIf this might not save Salvini’s poor poll numbers, one reason is that remigration already has a stronger spokesperson in former general Roberto Vannacci. The career soldier caused a sensation with his self-published 2023 book The World Upside Down, which decried mass immigration and the “normalisation” of gay people. His self-published screed sold about 100,000 copies, and he soon became a League member of the European parliament. Earlier this month, Vannacci announced he was breaking away to found his own party, with remigration as its key focus. He has announced a second book, The World Upside Down II: Remigration.Vannacci’s new party, Futuro Nazionale, which has already won over two League MPs, is not yet a serious force. It is in a dispute with two other groups over its logo and name. Its first MP, Emanuele Pozzolo, was kicked out of Meloni’s parliamentary cohort after a gun incident at a new year’s party. Yet Vannacci enjoys broad renown, and his embrace of the slogan can bring it far wider attention.The result could be a harder-right rival to Meloni, on everything from migration to foreign policy. Before becoming prime minister in October 2022, Meloni had herself warned of the “ethnic substitution” of Italians. In office, she has used more coded language. Some centrists even credit Meloni with shedding her ideological baggage, especially in pursuing a cross-EU approach to border control. During her term, they note, Italy has increased the number of guestworker visas.Yet, these rightwing approaches aren’t necessarily in contradiction. Even in the 1990s, National Alliance, one of the forerunners of Meloni’s party, accepted temporary labour migration as a necessary evil, while resisting an “ethnic and cultural dilution of Italy”. Migrants could be tolerated temporarily, but not as equals with rights that they could pass on to their children. Still today, as the proportion of Italian-born children with immigrant parents has risen steeply, Italy denies them birthright citizenship (known as ius soli).Last month, the head of Meloni’s group of MPs claimed that calls for ius soli undermined democracy itself. Such a policy would, he said, mean handing the vote to maranza, “teenage delinquents”. Meanwhile, even while allowing more temporary work visas, this government has stepped up removals of undocumented people, while pressing the EU to outsource migrant processing to non-member-states with weaker legal protections. A new Meloni government bill revives an earlier call for 30-day “naval blockades” on arrivals by sea, and widens the criteria for expulsions.Rightwing parties across Europe have in recent years been making migrants’ settled status more conditional. Ideas like stripping criminals of citizenship have become law, as have measures limiting benefits for migrants’ children. In Britain, Reform UK’s call to scrap indefinite leave to remain threatens to make migrants’ conditions more precarious, as does the “the Danish model”, which gives refugees temporary status rather than even promising integration.It is undeniable: European politics is pulling away from the language of integration. The advocates of an extreme idea like remigration can look around the continent and feel, with good reason, they are increasingly free to challenge the idea that minorities are here to stay. David Broder is the author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism In Contemporary Italy