‘It’s not over!’ EU chief still fears Eurosceptic revolution

The EU Commission chief warned about the deep underlying dissatisfaction with voters at a press conference marking the unveiling of the Estonian presidency of the European Council.

The trend in France at least showed a surge in support amongst the French youth for Marine Le Pen, whilst president Emmanuel Macron was voted in by overwhelmingly older voters. The Front National leader is liked by 35-49 year olds, but also by 34 per cent of 18-24s which does not bode well for the future of Brussels in a next round of elections.

Juncker warned officials that they did not “speak a language which is more understandable for the young” then the EU will inevitably “die” due to lack of support. “I was very happy when Emmanuel Macron was elected, but the danger of the far extreme right forces still exists – don’t believe that this is over. Le Pen got 11 million votes, not only youngsters, and I don’t believe that young people would be more attracted by this simplification the populistic wording of the extreme right, I don’t think that is the case.”

The EU boss suggested that younger people were not too smart and that they needed an “understandable” message: “When it comes to the language of the Commission I’m trying to use a non-technical wording when addressing Europeans. It’s dangerous because sometimes you are losing the right direction, but we have to explain ourselves in an understandable way. We are trying to be close to people, we are not prisoners in Brussels.”

The EU has survived a series of recent electoral challenges by patriotic parties in 2016 and the early part of this year, with many openly pursuing eurosceptic agendas, which Juncker tried to paint as “extremist” and “far-right”. But both Le Pen and Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders significantly increased their vote shares.

In Sweden Jimmie Akesson’s anti-immigration Swedish Democrats, could do well in an election scheduled for later this year with some polls showing that a Swexit referendum could be on the cards.

Dutch daily, De Telegraaf – with the largest ciculation in the country – has revelead criminality rates among asylum seekers through a FOI request. National Dutch Police had denied they kept numbers on asylum seeker and migrant crime, despite the police having paid analysts to reveal if migrants were more likely to commit crimes.

According to De Telegraaf on Friday, Amsterdam police collected data on the request of the mayor and a “Migration and Foreigners crime” taskforce, but initially said they were “unable” to release the figures due to “the importance of current investigations”.

After a long battle, the Dutch daily has finally managed to obtain the data. By far the biggest share of criminal asylum seekers come from Morocco and Algeria, which are all deemed “safe” countries meaning that these migrants had almost no chance of obtaining asylum in The Netherlands. Two thirds of all suspected asylum seekers come from such safe countries.

Geert Wilders has repeatedly criticised Moroccan youths for making his country unsafe. Now De Telegraaf has revealed that more recent data suggests citizens from Morocco were posing a far bigger and growing crime problem than for example Albanians or Georgians.

According to Dutch police, criminal migrants were specifically targeting asylum centres with the best facilities and chances of remaining. When faced with deportation, theymove on to the next European country, De Telegraaf reported.