The EU’s new plan gets tough on deportations to outflank the continent’s surging populists. Instead, it might just be fueling their narrative.
STRASBOURG — The European Commission wants to ensure that when someone is told to leave the EU, they actually leave.
That’s the blunt message behind a major migration crackdown unveiled on Tuesday by Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner and Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen. The pair rolled out a plan to streamline deportations, toughen penalties for rejected migrants who do not leave the bloc, and create “return hubs” in countries outside the EU to house people awaiting deportation.
The Commission’s initiative derives from a striking statistic: In 2023 over 480,000 people were ordered to leave the EU — but only one in five actually did so.
While the official goal of the plan is to enforce existing migration rules, the primary aim is political: Holding off the far right.
“Migration … is often exploited by populists for political gain,” Virkkunen said.
“Our citizens expect us to manage migration effectively. When people with no right to stay remain in the EU, the credibility of our entire migration policy is undermined … and [this] diminishes Europe’s ability to attract and retain talent and skills.”
With anti-migrant sentiment boosting far-right parties across Germany, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden, Europe’s center right — led by the European People’s Party (EPP) — is scrambling to prove to voters that the political mainstream still has migration under control.
“With this proposal, we are putting our own house [Europe] in order,” Virkkunen said.
Cat-and-mouse game
Brunner made it clear Brussels has had enough of cat-and-mouse games on deportation.
“That is not acceptable for us,” he said of the one-in-five voluntary compliance number. “Our societies cannot and will not tolerate this. Something has to be done to safeguard our ability to grant asylum to those in need and safeguard public trust in an open and tolerant society.”
The plan introduces a European Return Order, which would be recognized across all 27 EU members — preventing deportees from simply hopping between countries to restart the asylum process.
It also gives national authorities more effective tools, including expanded detention powers for individuals deemed security risks. Under the plan, deportees classified as security risks would face automatic EU-wide entry bans, making re-entry to the bloc much harder.
The most controversial part of the package is what the Commission calls “return hubs” — offshore centers where deportees could be sent while awaiting removal.
The Commission insists the hubs won’t resemble the UK’s scrapped Rwanda plan for asylum-seeking migrants or Italy’s fraught deal with Albania, arguing that people would only be sent there after a legally binding deportation order.
Brunner stressed the Commission will not be creating the infrastructure but rather “setting out [the] minimum conditions” for countries to create deportation camps themselves.
“Member states can explore whether it’s going to be possible or not, whether we find third countries,” he said. “That’s a question of negotiation, agreements and arrangements.”
Brace for a Parliament fight
Borrowing heavily from the far-right’s playbook, the returns bill is one of the key EU election campaign promises of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the political family of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in an effort to draw voters back from European populist movements.
With the Parliament gearing up to start negotiations, questions linger over whether a centrist coalition comprising the EPP, the Socialists and Democrats and the liberals of the Renew group will survive, given the fundamental gaps among their positions — or whether the EPP will try to have the measure approved with the support of the same far-right parties the Commission is trying to fend off.
“This is not the right way to address the deportation issue, it’s a populist solution that doesn’t respect our values,” Renew Europe chief Valérie Hayer told reporters, echoing a press release by the Socialists that stated they would refuse any text including return hubs — one of the key pillars the EPP wants to see in the regulation.
Right-wing groups, meanwhile, expect the EPP to use the “Venezuela majority” — a coalition of conservatives and far-right parties — to push the bill through, as they have done since the June EU election.
“Obviously, we hope for a center-right majority … [but] now it’s up to the EPP,” Nicola Procaccini, co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) right-wing group, told reporters on Tuesday while praising Italy’s “return hub” model.
But Brunner was quick to dismiss the groups’ concerns. “I think it’s possible [to have S&D, Renew and the Greens on board] … we have so many safeguards as well, I do not see any reason to be against the idea of these return hubs.”
“It’s not about a political colour, it’s about the substance, this is actually about addressing [the problem], not about being left, right or middle,” he told reporters. “We also stand ready to explain [the] difficulties that some parties may have with it.”
The EPP hopes to count on S&D and Renew to pass the returns bill, just as the three agreed last year on the wider migration pact, lawmaker Tomas Tobé told POLITICO.
“I hope that constructive discussions can be possible again,” he said.
Giovanna Coi contributed reporting.
