The European Commission unveiled its long-awaited Returns Directive—an updated version of a 2008 legislation with the same name—to accompany the EU’s flagship Migration Pact set to come into force next year. The proposal outlines an ambitious first step to streamline the deportation of illegal migrants, but many conservatives maintain a healthy level of skepticism until they see it implemented.
Even though the directive largely follows EU member states’ unanimously approved demands from last year, the leftist parties in the Parliament immediately attacked it, driving a wedge between the members of Brussels’ ruling ‘Ursula coalition.’ It’s already clear that the EPP will be under immense pressure from its leftist allies in the next months to water down the proposal, so the question is whether they’ll hold out or cave in again.
The Returns Directive is often referred to as the last “missing piece” of the EU’s asylum system. Its main goal is fixing the EU’s abysmal deportation rate as less than 20% of illegal migrants with deportation orders currently leave the bloc every year and authorities are helpless to locate them.
If adopted, the regulation will streamline asylum procedures, increase detention times, remove the one-month voluntary departure period, introduce security checks and tougher rules for those deemed “risky,” and impose extended entry bans on deportees who were forcibly removed.
The new law would also allow member states to independently negotiate deportation agreements with third countries other than the countries of origin (similarly to the UK’s failed Rwanda plan), as well as explore the possibility of setting up third-country return hubs, similar to Italy’s Albania protocol.
A new instrument also proposed by the Commission is a common “European Return Order,” which would replace national deportation orders with a single system and database so that migrants could not “slip through the cracks” by escaping from one EU country to another.
Apart from answering the growing demands of member states, the legislation is meant to address Europeans’ concerns about illegal migration and migrant crime, aiming “to give the people the feeling back that we have control over what is happening in Europe,” the EU’s migration chief Magnus Brunner said.
But Brunner also admitted that the Commission’s (and the EPP’s) main reason for backing these tough rules is not necessarily a genuine desire to fix illegal migration, but the “existential” need to curb the rise of right-wing populist parties at the expense of the establishment. As Brunner explained:
If we, as the democratic center parties, do not address [illegal migration], we will lose the trust of the citizens altogether. And that is somewhat existential.
Conflict over return hubs
Left-wing parties were not exactly over the moon when hearing this presentation in Strasbourg. Several socialist and green MEPs accused the Commission and the EPP of wanting to “shamelessly appease the far-right” by violating fundamental rights and “criminalizing” migrants—as if crossing the borders illegally wasn’t a crime.
However, what they found most problematic was the document’s endorsement of exploring so-called innovative solutions, such as off-shore “return hubs”—deportation centers in third countries—that would prevent rejected asylum seekers from evading authorities and disappearing in the EU.
It’s not surprising that left-wing groups reject the idea: it’s modeled after Italy’s Albania protocol, which they have been trying to cancel since the very beginning. Leftist judges and opposition parties in Italy launched a coordinated attack against the protocol by citing EU law, despite the EU Commission itself backing Giorgia Meloni’s government at the EU Court of Justice against them.
Still, deportation centers in non-EU countries “cannot be part of our approach,” the socialist S&D group said in a press release before the debate, adding that it would be a “mistake” to look to the “legally questionable” Italy-Albania deal for inspiration.
Brunner rejected the comparison, saying that countries will only be able to send migrants to these ‘return hubs’ after they’ve been issued final deportation orders that can no longer be appealed, and not immediately after arrival as was the original plan with Italy’s ‘reception centers.’
It remains to be seen how the final legislation will turn out after the Parliament goes through it, and implementation is still years away. The only thing that’s certain is that the battle over the file is just beginning.