Research has linked a significant increase in jihadist violence in Europe to large-scale immigration and failed integration policies, accompanied by a documented rise in radicalization among second- and third-generation immigrants.
The influx of migrants has produced settled Muslim communities across Western Europe. Large swaths of these populations have failed to integrate in France, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and the children and grandchildren of the original immigrants, born on European soil and holding European passports, have become the primary radicalization pool from which the continent’s jihadist terrorism now draws.
Europol’s EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report recorded 120 terrorist attacks across the EU in 2023, up from 28 in 2022 and 18 in 2021, with 14 classified as jihadist and 334 jihadist arrests, a rise from 266 the prior year. In 2024, 58 attacks were recorded across 14 member states, 24 of them jihadist, with arrests climbing to 449, the highest figure in recent years. Spain, France, Belgium, and Germany accounted for the majority of both years’ arrests.
The profile of the perpetrators is consistent across multiple independent research bodies. Grey Dynamics, analyzing Europe’s jihadist threat through 2025, concluded that rather than recent immigrants or asylum seekers, the threat is primarily domestic, involving EU citizens or long-term residents who are frequently second-generation.