16 February, 2021
By Andrea Crescenzi and Réka Friedery
Migration policy overlaps other policy areas, for example integration policy, interior policy, defence policy and anti-discrimination policy. As a response to the sudden influx of migrants in 2015, and parallel to rising populistic movements, Germany and Italy started to adapt radical policies and measures in connection with immigration. Italy, as a frontline country, and Germany, as the destination country have adopted permissive measures as well as restrictive measures. Hence, in the following we analyse some of the main measures from the above mentioned areas to demonstrate that they intended either to thwart the rise of populistic movements in connection with migration or were favoured by populistic movements in the sense that they intended to curb immigration.