French public opinion shifted against welcoming refugees to France after terrorist attacks in November, a poll showed Wednesday, ending a brief stretch during which pro and con opinions on the issue were roughly matched.
The Ifop poll for Atlantico, which was conducted online in January after the attacks in Paris and mass sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, showed that 60 percent of respondents opposed welcoming refugees, versus 40 percent who were in favor.
According to analyst Jérome Fourquet, the poll signaled a return to a stable distribution of opinions after a period during which the pro and con camps were nearly equal — after the publication of a photograph of a toddler lying dead on a beach in Turkey caused an international stir.
“The discovery of Syrian passports linked to the authors of the November attacks fed the fears of those who worry about terrorists infiltrating the migrant flows,” Fourquet said.
Officially, France favors a measured approach to the migration question and has vowed to accept 30,000 asylum applicants. But so far just 62 refugees from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea have been assigned homes in France, after being registered at “hotspots” in Greece.
While thousands more migrants reside in French towns like Calais or Dunkerque, where they occupy makeshift camps, few are seeking asylum in France and most hope to travel onward to Britain.
By contrast Germany took in an estimated 1 million refugees last year and Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted calls to place a ceiling on the number to be accepted in the future.
Officials argue that France wants a European solution to the migrant question and pressed early on for setting up hotspots to process arriving asylum-seekers. Delays in making hotspots effective have slowed the relocation of asylum-seekers throughout the EU, including France.
But aid workers and critics point to another reason behind French slowness: concerns that diverting budgets in towns to welcoming migrants could bolster Marine Le Pen’s far-right party.
“When [Europe] asked France to raise the number of refugees it was welcoming, the concern was to say, ‘but what are the economic repercussions locally?’ They were a bit stuck due to the context of the last elections and the rise of the National Front,” said Jean-François Dubost, a migration specialist at the Amnesty International aid group.