“A welcoming culture is an expression of naive and illusory thinking,” a spokesman for Alfa, a recently founded opposition party in Germany, said Sunday. “What we need, instead, is realism and a sense of proportion. We shouldn’t go beyond providing the basics for asylum seekers, like food and shelter, because it will attract more people.”

In France, far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, speaking at her party’s annual gathering in Marseille on Sunday, said: “Germany has a heavy responsibility for inciting at the level of the European Union a passive acceptance of this crisis. Germany is probably thinking about its declining demography. It is probably looking to lower salaries again and recruit slaves through mass immigration.”…

If such views gain ground in Western Europe, where popular right-wing opposition parties are pressing governments to act tougher on immigration, it could undermine Berlin’s push for refugees to be distributed more equitably across the EU, leaving Germany alone to absorb what could be close to a million migrants this year, many of whom with no intention to leave.

Opinion polls published last week showed an overwhelming majority of Germans supported helping those fleeing war and persecution—and many have already been doing so. But the comments from the CSU suggest such openness may not endure as the emergency situation gives way to the trickier task of providing the migrants with a long-term prospect.