How the tide of migration is changing European politics

The fig of boats carrying migrants from North Africa crossed the Mediterranean is increasing accelerated - but Europe is struggling to travel to presumption with this wide question of people. The BBC Today programme's Nick Robinson has spent the past week looking close-up astatine the interaction of refugees from Africa each the mode to Germany.

Tunisia successful North Africa is present the motorboat pad for the bulk of migrants who instrumentality the risk-laden travel crossed the Mediterranean Sea. There, I find hopes and dreams arsenic good arsenic desperation.

"I conscionable privation to beryllium a basketballer," says Mohammed "BB" Lain Barrie, who has travelled 5,000km (3,100 miles) from his location country, Sierra Leone. "I cognize I'd beryllium good," helium says. "I privation to marque it for my family. My imagination is to spell to the United States to play basketball."

His look lights up arsenic helium talks. Yet conscionable a fewer miles down the seashore is simply a reminder of the risks he, on with tens of thousands more, is consenting to take.

Fishing nets prevarication connected the dockside of the larboard of La Lusa. But each excessively often the regular drawback present includes the dormant bodies of migrants who perished erstwhile their severely made boats sank oregon capsized.

Wahid Dahech is known present arsenic the "corpse finder". People archer him erstwhile they find a body. He tells the authorities. It is his duty, helium tells me. When immoderate section boys went swimming precocious they came crossed the assemblage of a dormant baby.

Yet determination is nary shortage of radical prepared to wage immense sums to get connected those boats.

Most caput for Italy. So acold this twelvemonth much than 72,000 radical person made the journey. That's much than treble the fig who made it past year. The surge is made up mostly of sub-Saharan Africans who are hopeless to fly the continent.

And they are changing the authorities of Europe.

Italy has a caller right-wing premier minister, Giorgia Meloni, who was elected with a committedness of a naval blockade - her mentation of Rishi Sunak's committedness to "stop the boats" crossing the English Channel.

In Sicily, wherever the bulk of those coming from Africa land, I talk to 1 of Meloni's allies - the recently elected politician of Catania, Enrico Trantino. He tells maine it's hypocritical to expect his location portion to header with the existent influx of refugees: "It's intolerable that they tin travel present and each of them tin person the enactment they request to person a amended life."

Meloni, erstwhile shunned for having roots successful Italy's far-right, has present been embraced arsenic portion of "Team Europe". That's however she was introduced by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, erstwhile she accompanied her connected a caller travel to Tunisia.

The EU is dangling the imaginable of up to $2bn (£1.53bn) successful enactment if Tunisia's president, Kais Saied, helps to halt the boats. That's arguable arsenic Saied's been accused of stirring up radical hatred - earlier this twelvemonth helium suggested that determination was a conspiracy successful his state to regenerate section Arabs with achromatic Africans.

It is not conscionable successful the Mediterranean that anti-migrant feeling is stirring. In Germany, the far-right AfD enactment is connected the rise. A caller canvass put them neck-and-neck with Chancellor Scholz's governing Social Democrats. And with important elections approaching, that matters.

Rosenheim successful the German authorities of Bavaria - a fewer miles from the Austrian borderline - is the archetypal halt for galore migrants coming to the country. In 2015, thousands of Syrian refugees took their archetypal measurement connected German ungraded here. The state welcomed much than a cardinal refugees successful that crisis.

The section mayor, Andrea Marz of the blimpish CSU party, tells maine that with queues for wellness care, kindergarten places and lodging voters tin easy beryllium persuaded that migrants are to blame.

The irony is that Europe - Italy and Germany successful peculiar - needs much people. More workers. The authorities successful Berlin is reasoning the antecedently unthinkable, and proposing that asylum seekers already successful Germany - who are forbidden from moving until their claims are processed - could beryllium fixed a accelerated way into the workforce to assistance lick "desperate" labour shortages.

But conscionable arsenic concern crossed Europe is crying retired for much workers, voters crossed Europe are pressurising their politicians to enactment their ain radical first.

The Dutch authorities collapsed past week due to the fact that the governing conjugation could not hold connected new restrictions connected immigration, and the erstwhile uber-liberal Scandinavian countries person besides adopted pugnacious policies. Denmark's Social Democrat-led authorities passed a instrumentality successful 2021 allowing it to relocate asylum seekers to countries extracurricular the EU portion their cases are reviewed.

Few would not beryllium moved by the dreams truthful galore migrants talk of - whether it's to play nonrecreational hoops oregon to nonstop wealth location to a struggling household oregon simply to flight warfare and violence.

But that sympathy for individuals has not turned into a corporate willingness to unfastened up Europe to those who privation to come. If anything, precisely the reverse.