EU to expand deportation regime as Europe turns against migrants

A new EU-wide deportation regime is set to be unveiled by the European Commission, raising alarm among rights defenders as the bloc continues its political push to crack down on migration.

The bill, possibly a regulation, will be presented on Tuesday (11 March) by the Brussels executive and is likely to entail wording that allows member states to bilaterally set up prison-like deportation centres abroad for rejected asylum seekers.

Building on the back of a failed 2018 return directive draft, the latest proposal may end up seeing the commission strip away legal barriers so that member states can forcibly send rejected asylum seekers to any foreign country without their consent.

"That is the most likely way that this is going to look," said Olivia Sundberg Diez, a policy expert at Amnesty International in Brussels.

"What we will see in this proposal is the commission creating the conditions for return hubs or deportation centres to be established at national level through bilateral engagements with third countries," added Diez.

No details have been given on what these deportation centres would look like, or where they would be hosted. It is also unclear where these people would go should their origin country still refuse to accept their return.

But past similar efforts in Australia, the UK deal with Rwanda, and Italy's centres in Albania, have all failed to deliver on promises while imposing enormous costs on taxpayers as well as suffering among migrants.

"Offshoring, or attempting to shift non-citizens to the territory of another country, tends to be futile, expensive, cruel and illegal," said Madeline Gleeson, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney.

Gleeson said Australia's experiment to offshore asylum and detention onto neighbouring Pacific islands ended in disaster, costing taxpayers over €500m a year.

"This is for a policy which, all up over a decade, only encompassed about 3,000 people," she said.

UK's deal with Rwanda had been inspired by the Australian model. It too failed. And now Italy's deal with Albania is facing a similar fate.

'Offshoring, or attempting to shift non citizens to the territory of another country, tends to be futile, expensive, cruel and illegal'

But the move is part of wider political push on the back of elections in Europe where migration and asylum continue to galvanise the far-right, including in Germany where the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second-largest party in the country in February.

Over the weekend, German election winner Friedrich Merz of the centre-right CDU announced he intends to massively expand border controls, significantly increase the number of rejections at the border, and "take all legal measures to reduce irregular migration overall."

The commission's return bill on Tuesday is likely to please Merz as it will probably shift the focus away from voluntary returns under the failed 2018 bill towards forced returns, including possible detention of children.

It will also likely make it more difficult for rejected asylum applicants to lodge appeals.

In a news conference on Sunday, EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen said it would come with a new 'European Return Order' and mutual recognition of return decisions by member states.

"Those who are forcibly returned, will be issued with an entry ban. And we will be stricter where there are security risks," she said.

Whatever the text, the proposal will still need to go through the often very lengthy process of negotiations between the council, representing member states, and the European Parliament. And how it dovetails into the EU's recent overhaul of its internal asylum and migration rules remains to be seen.

“‘Although neutrally phrased  as a law on 'returns', the EU is in reality proposing an expanded deportation regime," said Sarah Chander, who heads the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, an NGO, in an emailed statement.