EU Overhauls Migration Policy, Accelerating Deportations and Establishing Offshore Detention

The European Union has pushed through a sweeping overhaul of its migration policy, a move designed to accelerate deportations and establish contentious detention centres abroad. Rights groups have drawn parallels between these new measures and the aggressive immigration strategies implemented by the Trump administration.

Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister for Cyprus, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said: "The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU." The agreement was finalised during a "trilogue" meeting on Monday evening, involving the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament.

Dutch lawmaker Malik Azmani, who guided the regulation through the European Parliament, emphasised the urgency. "Europe cannot afford another period of standstill," he said. "There is an urgent need for an effective return policy with higher return rates." Mr Azmani highlighted that only 28 per cent of rejected asylum seekers return to their country of origin, with the majority remaining within the EU. "This situation is deeply concerning. It undermines public confidence in our common migration policies."

Critics have likened the new regulations to the immigration policies of the Trump administration, which forged a series of undisclosed agreements with various nations to deport thousands of individuals to countries not their own. Similarly, the United Kingdom had planned to deport migrants to Rwanda, though this initiative became mired in legal challenges and was ultimately abandoned following a change of government in July 2024.

Several EU governments are already in talks with third countries

“Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement," said Silvia Carter, spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it.”

Law enforcement officers across the bloc no longer need warrants from judges to raid private residences or public institutions like hospitals, she said. “The regulation is going to create a draconian detention and deportation machine."

The provisional agreement will now head to the EU lawmakers and governments, where approval will likely be swift.

“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.

EU member nations will soon be able to set up bilateral deals with countries outside the bloc to build deportation centres. 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.

“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 legalization 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.

EU migration policy has steadily shifted to the right

The EU has continually tightened migration policies after right-wing parties secured the majority of votes in some countries in the 2024 elections to the European Parliament. 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. “There was quite an unprecedented shift in the European Parliament."

Advocacy groups warned the regulation would cut deep into the protections granted by the EU fundamental charter on human rights and expose people to risks outside the bloc.