A study by a conservative think tank in Hungary has claimed that migrants were involved in 45 per cent of jihadi terror plots in Europe over the past decade.
The report, published by the Danube Institute in May 2026, defines a migrant plotter as anyone born outside Europe who spent their childhood in a non-European country, regardless of legal status or how long they have lived on the continent. The category covers recent asylum seekers as well as long-term residents.
Its author, criminologist Simon Cottee, examined 221 jihadi plots recorded between May 2015 and May 2025. He found that 100 of them involved at least one migrant, identifying 137 migrant plotters in total. The vast majority of the plots were inspired by Islamic State (ISIS).
Plotters came from more than 20 countries, most commonly Syria, Iraq and Morocco, and almost all were men in their twenties and thirties.
Plots involving a migrant killed 279 people, against 107 for those without one, the report said. Cottee noted, though, that two attacks — the November 2015 Paris attacks and the 2016 Nice lorry-ramming attack — accounted for 216 of those deaths.
Germany was the most frequent target, with almost half of the migrant-related plots, followed by France with 21 and the United Kingdom with 10. Hungary, which closed its borders during the 2015 migration crisis, recorded almost no activity, although it has been fined €200 million by the European Court of Justice for breaching EU asylum rules.
In more recent cases, particularly in Germany, plots have increasingly targeted Jewish and Israeli sites, which the report links to the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.
The Danube Institute, based in Budapest, describes itself as conservative and has been closely associated with the government of former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. The report has not been peer-reviewed, and Cottee acknowledges that his classification of cases rests on his own reading of open sources.
His findings challenge research that treats European jihadism as a mainly homegrown phenomenon. A 2025 study by Thomas Renard and Méryl Demuynck for the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) concluded that terrorism in Europe remained largely a domestic problem, and that concerns about refugee terrorism were overstated.
Cottee found that 79 per cent of migrant plotters were “self-starters” who developed their ISIS sympathies only after reaching Europe, and that almost half held asylum or residency status at the time of their plot. Critics cite such patterns as evidence that radicalisation happens on European soil, but he argues they did not arrive as blank slates.
He describes a “fourth wave” of jihadism linked to mass migration, and concludes that Orbán, who lost power in the April 2026 election, was right to warn that the 2015 crisis would threaten European security.
