The EU has moved forward with a vast overhaul of its migration policy, aiming to ramp up deportations and ink controversial deals to build detention centers abroad, in what rights groups compare to the aggressive immigration policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration.
“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.
The deal was struck between the EU’s three main institutions — the European Commission, the European Council and European Parliament — during a so-called “trilogue” on Monday evening.
Photo: AFP
Critics compared the regulation to the immigration strategy of the Trump administration, which has struck a series of secretive agreements with nations around the world to deport thousands of people to countries that are not their own. The UK also planned to deport migrants to Rwanda, but the plan was bogged down in legal red tape and the new government dropped the plan as soon as it came into power.
“The Regulation is going to create a draconian detention and deportation machine,” said Silvia Carter, spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.
“Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement. Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it,” she said, referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The provisional agreement will now head to the EU lawmakers and heads of state, where approval is likely to be swift.
EU member nations will soon be able to set up bilateral deals with countries outside the bloc to build deportation centers. At least five EU nations — Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece — are already in talks with third countries, mostly in Africa, to host “return hubs” on the model of Italy’s detention deal with Albania.
The EU has continually tightened migration policies after right-wing parties took power in some countries in 2024. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the center-right European People’s Party coalition, has said that the new measures would 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 have driven 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 US.
Center-right political groups allied with the far-right to overcome opposition from centrist and left-wing parties, said Melissa Camara, a French lawmaker and member of the Greens who called the deal “a historic setback” for human rights in the bloc.
“The legalization of return hubs outside the EU, 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.
Activist groups warned the legislation would cut deep into the protections granted by the EU 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,” International Rescue Committee spokesperson Marta Welander said. “It looks set to normalize 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.”
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