Eighty per cent of British Muslims identify themselves as Muslims first and British second.

time has not arrived when a German chancellor can talk about immigration and ethnic divides without it arousing anxiety and old fears throughout Europe and beyond.

So when German leader, Angela Merkel, said last weekend that her country's approach to multiculturalism -- known disparagingly as multi-kulti -- has "utterly failed" it caught international attention more firmly than would similar words from other European leaders.

But Germany's failure to either integrate its 16 million immigrants and particularly the four million Turks, or enfold these people in a multicultural embrace is far from unique.

Across Europe multiculturalism and integration of immigrants has failed just as surely as in Germany.

To a large extent this is because no European government has made a serious stab at developing a coherent immigration policy.

For the most part newly arrived communities have been left to work out their own salvations.

In far too many cases this has led to the rise of separate and parallel communities unattached to the mainstream of their new countries.

The situation has been exacerbated, of course, by the development of the European Community, which now includes the free movement of people among the 26 member nations.

This has seen, for example, the recent campaign by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to expel Gypsies, the Roma, who have travelled to France from eastern Europe in search of work and trade.

Even more central has been a rising tide of suspicion aimed at Muslims as terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States by Islamic militants coincide with persistent immigration pressures from the Middle East and North Africa.

As well as in Germany, these pressures are evident in Spain, Italy, Britain, Holland, Sweden and France, where two years ago there were prolonged riots in the grim apartment developments beyond Paris's Peripherique ring road where most of the city's Algerian and other North African immigrants live.

One result in Europe has been an extraordinary shift of voter support to far-right politicians preaching various anti-Muslim creeds in countries like Holland and Sweden, which have reputations for almost excessive tolerance.

Merkel's announcement of the death of multi-kulti and her plans to introduce policies aimed at assisting immigrants to integrate are a response to similar shifts in public opinion.

Polls show that about a third of Germans believe the country is "overrun by foreigners."

The premier of Bavaria, who is politically allied to Merkel's right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union, last week called for an end to immigration from Turkey and Arab countries.

And Thilo Sarrazin, a controversial public servant and member of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party, has been fired from his position as senior official of the Bundesbank after writing a book saying immigrants who fail to integrate are contributing to Germany's decline.

"Turks are conquering Germany in the same way as Kosovars conquered Kosovo -- with a high birthrate," he wrote.

In Holland the anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders and his Freedom party may well join a conservative coalition government after inconclusive elections in June.

Wilders, who is on trial for allegedly violating hate speech laws, believes the Koran is a book that promotes violence and should be banned, there should be a mass deportation of Muslims, and that a tax should be levied on women wearing Islamic head scarves.

In Sweden in September a party with neo-Nazi roots, Sweden Democrats, won seats in parliament for the first time.

But there are some reports from the Swedish industrial city of Malmo that intense immigration by Muslims from the Middle East has led to persistent attacks on the city's Jewish residents.

Economic uncertainty throughout the EU, high unemployment among immigrants and the generous social services payments that are common throughout Europe have undoubtedly added to suspicions over immigrants who have failed to integrate.

Negative views of Muslim immigrants are common throughout Europe according to recent polls, and are matched by isolationism among the immigrants themselves.

Eighty per cent of British Muslims identify themselves as Muslims first and British second.

In Spain and Germany 70 per cent of Muslims make the same distinction. And 40 per cent of British Muslims think terrorist attacks on fellow Britons and Americans are justified.



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