The European Union has launched a significant overhaul of its migration policy aimed at increasing deportations and establishing controversial detention centres abroad. Rights groups have compared this approach to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies.
The agreement was reached among the EU’s main institutions during a trilogue meeting on Monday. Dutch lawmaker Malik Azmani emphasised the need for a more effective return policy, noting that only 28% of rejected asylum seekers return to their home countries, leading to diminished public confidence in migration policies.
Critics have likened the EU’s actions to Trump’s policies, which involved secret agreements to deport individuals to foreign countries. Additionally, the UK planned to deport migrants to Rwanda, but that plan was abandoned due to legal challenges after a new government took office in July 2024.
“The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU,” said Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister for Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc.
Several EU governments negotiate with third countries.
“Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear caused by ICE’s harsh immigration enforcement,” said Silvia Carter, spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants. “Europe should learn from these issues instead of creating its own version.” She highlighted that EU law enforcement will no longer need warrants to raid private homes or public institutions like hospitals. “This regulation will establish a severe detention and deportation system.” The provisional agreement will now head to EU lawmakers and governments, where swift approval is expected.
“These new rules will ensure swifter, simpler, and more effective procedures across the European Union for returning non-EU nationals who have no right to stay, in full respect of international law and fundamental rights,” said Henna Virkkunen, EU commissioner for technology.
European Union member states are poised to establish bilateral agreements with non-EU countries to develop deportation centres. At present, at least five EU nations—Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Greece—are engaged in discussions with various third countries, primarily in Africa, to create “return hubs.” These initiatives are modelled after Italy’s detention agreement with Albania.
“We are delivering the member states tools in their hands to make those agreements and arrangements with third countries,” Azmani said. Mélissa Camara, a lawmaker from the French Green party, said the deal was “a historic setback” for human rights in the bloc. “The legalisation of return hubs outside the European Union, the green light for the detention of minors, home visits inspired by ICE practices: the legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology is now complete,” she said.
A right-wing EU migration policy
The EU has continually tightened migration policies since right-wing parties secured majorities in some countries in the 2024 European Parliament elections. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the centre-right European People’s Party coalition, has said that the new measures will prevent a repeat of the 2015 crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, when about 1 million people arrived to seek asylum. Fueled by people fleeing conflict and poverty across Africa and the Middle East, the 2015 refugee crisis and successive years of irregular migration to Europe drove a rightward shift in the bloc’s politics not unlike the anti-immigrant sentiment that buoyed a “red wave” in the 2024 election in the United States. After successfully campaigning on tougher migration policies, the winners of that election, the European People’s Party, the largest political group in the EU, began negotiating migration reform with centrist and left parties, only to eventually sidestep them by allying instead with the far right, said Carter, the asylum rights activist.
An unprecedented shift in the European Parliament
Advocacy groups warned that the regulation would cut deeply into the protections granted by the EU’s fundamental charter on human rights and expose people to risks outside the bloc.
“This deal will give governments much broader powers to detain and deport people,” said Marta Welander, a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organisation. “It looks set to normalise immigration raids, expand the use of detention in prison-like facilities outside EU territory that are essentially legal black holes, and increase the risk of people being deported to countries where they could face persecution, torture or worse.”
This article used information from The Associated Press.
