EU nears deal on plan to boost failed asylum seeker returns

BRUSSELS — The EU is closing in on a plan designed to increase the number of failed asylum seekers leaving the bloc.

Described by Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner as the “missing piece” of plans to toughen up EU migration policy, negotiators for the Council, Parliament and Commission are expected to reach a deal in a final round of talks on Wednesday.

The rate of failed asylum seekers leaving the EU is around 20 percent, according to numbers cited by the European Commission, although recent Eurostat figures put it above 25 percent.

“People who do not have the right to stay in the European Union must be returned effectively,” Brunner told POLITICO. “The new rules will give us more control over who can come to the EU, who can stay, and who must leave. This is what EU citizens expect, and that is what we must deliver.”

A stricter migration policy has become a mainstream position across Europe, part of a broader right-wing shift, and the low level of returns has become a key talking point of politicians advocating for tougher measures. On the EU level, increasing the number of deportations is a central feature of attempts to boost control over who crosses the bloc’s external borders.

If approved on Wednesday, there would be stricter rules for dealing with people who are considered a security threat, as well as the possibility of detention and long entry bans. There would also be penalties for those who don’t cooperate and powers to search people’s homes.

The law would also give countries the option to send people who’ve been ordered to leave EU territory to “return hubs” outside the bloc.

Brunner and national migration ministers have called them an “innovative solution” to the bloc’s migration challenges.

Germany and the Netherlands want to have plans for hubs in place by the end of 2026. Italy has already built hubs in Albania to process applications and return failed asylum seekers, although its plans have been mired in legal challenges.

But NGOs say that these hubs risk becoming lawless offshore detention centers. The lack of detail on where the hubs will be placed and who will monitor them “risks leaving the door open to abuses of power, human rights violations, and even more disorder at Europe’s borders,” said Imogen Sudbery, executive director of the NGO International Rescue Committee Belgium.

The planned reforms have divided the European Parliament, with the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) securing the Parliament’s negotiating position ahead of the talks with the support of right-wing groups rather than its traditional centrist partners. There was further outrage when it was reported that right-wing groups had coordinated their stance in a WhatsApp group.

That has made the migration plan a lightning rod for fury about the EPP’s willingness to forge majorities with parties on the right, which have long been kept out of European decision-making.

French Green MEP Mélissa Camara called on the Cypriot presidency of the Council, which is leading the talks, “to come to its senses and not make the historic and unforgivable mistake of concluding a shameful agreement with the far-right political groups in the European Parliament.”

But proponents of the plans argue that a functional migration system requires that people without the right to stay in the bloc be removed.

“We remain committed to delivering a robust, security-oriented and operational Return Regulation that addresses Europe’s low return rate,” said the negotiator for the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, Sweden’s Charlie Weimers.