The European Union is sending mixed messages to its immigrant populations. Newcomers are badly needed to alleviate a growing demographic crisis and labour shortage, while some groups face the prospect of discrimination.
A recent proposal by the European Commission aims to harmonise the bloc's patchwork of migration policies, especially regarding asylum. It also formally endorses what was once a far-right talking point: deportation and third-country processing.
Rights groups have blasted the idea of “return hubs” as unworkable and a violation of international law.
“[The proposal] introduces a lot of deeply troubling, deeply punitive and disproportionate measures within the EU for anybody going through a return decision,” Olivia Sundberg Diez, the EU Advocate on Migration and Asylum at Amnesty International, told The Parliament.
Unlike the decades-long legislative struggle among 27 member states to agree on a uniform migration policy, which culminated in last year's Migration Pact, the Commission's latest proposal would be a regulation. That means it would immediately apply to all member states, bypassing debate and input.
Under pressure to expedite the process, the new legal framework came without an impact assessment. Civil society organisations have complained that they were not consulted.
Central to the Commission’s proposal is the European Return Order, which would compel EU members to recognise deportation orders from other members. It also strengthens national authorities’ powers, including expanding detention and EU-wide entry bans — for as long as ten years, in some cases — for people classified as threats.
What constitutes a threat or security risk remains undefined.
“Cruelty seems to be the point,” Diez said, calling the proposal more about short-term political wins than a long-term strategy to improving the migration system.
Breaking the deportation taboo
More than a euphemism, "return hubs" are a misnomer. These would be third countries where the EU's rejected asylum seekers get sent regardless if they have a connection to that place. It is full of legal pitfalls.
“The outcome might be in contradiction to what is the European law. It would have been rather unthinkable a few years ago, and it's not unthinkable anymore,” Martin Hofmann, a principal advisor at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, told The Parliament.
Any third-country deals would have to comply with international law and assure fundamental rights, according to the Commission proposal. Unaccompanied minors and families with children would be exempt from these measures.
Last month, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights warned that the “planned return hubs must not become zones without rights.” Some members of the European Parliament have called the idea “outsourcing of the return policy.”
“The new policy agenda of the Commission is really focused on externalisation and security issues, so there is not much about integration; there is not really talking about how Europe should welcome and integrate new refugees, new asylum seekers, new migrants,” Carmine Conte, a senior legal policy analyst at Migration Policy Group, told The Parliament.
Past deportation schemes like Italy's failed plan with Albania and the United Kingdom's scuttled deal with Rwanda have been weighed down by human rights violations, including arbitrary detention in inhumane conditions. The Italy-Albania partnership was deemed illegal and lambasted as expensive and impractical.
“The problem with these measures is you are talking about tens of thousands of migrants, not a few hundred,” Florian Trauner, the dean of the Brussels School of Governance, told The Parliament. “It's very difficult to convince a third country to take them in.”
Other efforts to use third countries as obstacles to keep people from reaching EU borders, so-called cash-for-migrant deals, are rife with allegations of abuse and lack of transparency.
Voluntary returns, often with cash incentives, have also proven difficult to manage. Following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, for example, some European countries tried to coax their Syrian refugee population to go home, despite ongoing violence and political uncertainty there.
Austria offered €1,000 per person, while Denmark provided up to €27,000 per adult and €6,700 per child. The Netherlands offered €900 in cash to Syrians who withdrew their asylum claims or surrendered temporary residence permits.
“With the proposal that is now on the table, we finally have something that can work. Voluntary return simply does not work,” Assita Kanko, an MEP with the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists Group, told The Parliament.
The costs of a "return” plan remain to be seen but could skyrocket. Italy’s two centres in Albania have an estimated budget of €670 million over the next five years, though few people could actually be sent there.
Broader trend
The EU’s pursuit of a unified asylum processing system has been fraught with difficulties spanning decades. The 1990s saw initial efforts to harmonise asylum procedures with the Dublin regulation, which made the EU country of entry responsible for processing claims. That failed to foresee the 2015 wave of migrants, which disproportionately impacted southern European and Mediterranean states.
That's why the European Commission introduced the New Pact on Migration and Asylum in 2020. After extensive negotiations, the Pact was adopted in 2024, introducing measures to expedite asylum procedures and boost solidarity among member states. Yet that has not stopped many of them from going their own way.
Austria’s government has temporarily halted family reunions, citing integration concerns. In Germany, where the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came in second in February’s elections, chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz announced he intends to expand border controls, significantly increase the number of rejections at the border and "take all legal measures to reduce irregular migration overall."
France has unveiled a hardline immigration stance, proposing legislation to extend detention periods and tighten residency criteria. Poland risks an EU lawsuit for potentially violating rules.
All this seems to suggest that the EU has a major crisis on its hands — a framing most migration policy specialists reject.
“We don't have, let's say, an unbearable amount of migration flows coming to Europe,” Conte, from MPG, said. “It is more a narrative that has been put out by the politicians.”
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