The far right is steering the EU’s response on migration | Letter

Positions once associated with the radical right have travelled well beyond it, says Giuseppe Martinico

I agree with much of Alberto Alemanno’s analysis (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/18/far-right-grip-eu-centrist-coalition-afd-national-rally">How the far right is tightening its grip over the EU – from the inside, 18 August), but I wonder whether framing this primarily as the far right tightening its grip on the EU risks missing an even more troubling development.

What we are witnessing is not simply the success of the far right.

It is a broader cultural shift within the European political mainstream.

Migration is perhaps the clearest example.

The convergence between governments as politically different as those of Denmark and Italy suggests that positions once associated with the radical right have travelled well beyond it.

Parts of the centre-left and centre-right have progressively abandoned a rights-based understanding of migration.

More fundamentally, migrants increasingly disappear from the European political conversation as persons – as bearers of rights whose dignity should constitute a limit to what political majorities may legitimately do.