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The European Parliament will vote soon on a law aiming to increase returns of irregular migrants, also through controversial deportation centers outside the EU, detentions up to two years, and raids on homes that NGOs compare to US style ICE’s methods.
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The Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) approved on Monday a version of the text supported by the center-right, right-wing, and far-right groups, breaking the traditional “centrist majority”. Left side groups of the hemicycle announced their opposition to the bill, which has now to be voted on by the entire Parliament.
The committee vote confirmed a trend of the European People’s Party (EPP) siding with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) on all files related to migration.
Negotiations within the traditional centrist majority, which includes EPP, Socialists and Democrats (S&D), liberal Renew Europe and the Greens have broken down, and the text proposed by rapporteur, liberal Dutch MEP Malik Azmani, was eventually voted down.
EPP lead negotiator François-Xavier Bellamy blamed the Socialists for not having engaged, refusing to accept the basic principles of the law. “We need action now on the fight against irregular migration, as only 20% of the return decisions issued all over Europe are actually implemented”, he told journalist after the vote.
Leftis groups strongly criticize the outcome. “The text adopted reflects a racist and populist ideology. It will endanger people’s lives and violate their dignity”, Greens MEP Mélissa Camara told Euronews, claiming that it breaches “basic principles of the rule of law”.
A controversial bill, criticized by civil society
The return regulation was proposed by the European Commission in March 2025 and endorsed by the member states last December.
It would establish the mutual recognition of return decisions applied to migrants among the EU member states and allow authorities to search the place of residence or “other relevant places” where a third-country national who got an expulsion order could be found.
“It will be up to the member states to prioritise their law enforcement agencies to really enforce this [rules], paving the way for an effective return policy”, MEP Charlie Weimers, lead negotiator for ECR group, told Euronews.
Critics say that this provision could translate into raids similar to the one conducted by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which have provoked protests and clashes in the US, most notably in Minnesota.
“This would potentially open the door to police raiding houses of people suspected of hosting migrants, as well as offices and shelters run by humanitarian organisations”, Silvia Carta, Advocacy Officer at Picum, a network of organisations in the migration field, told Euronews.
She believes that in some member states legislative or even constitutional provisions may prevent the application of this law, but fears that somewhere else the regulation would extend the possibilities to conduct investigations without a very clear legal framework, such as a judicial authorisation.
The law would also enable EU countries to return irregular migrants to third countries unrelated to their origin, as long as they have bilateral agreements in place with a non-EU state to build detention centers called “return hubs” in its territory.
Independent monitoring body scrapped
According to the bill, the hubs can be either places of transit or locations where a person is expected to stay, which raises issues about the rights of migrant people as they would be sent back to countries where they have no connection to.
Respect for fundamental rights in the detention centers built outside the EU is also a reason of concerns for NGO, as they denounce the lack of safeguards and accountability.
The responsibility for this is assigned only to the EU member states, as the European Parliament removed a provision to have an independent body or mechanism set up to monitor the effective application of the agreements with third countries, which was initially proposed by the Commission.
“The fact that these hubs could be established by arrangements, informal memorandum of understanding, or other forms of consensus, would mean that there are no clear and strong legal standards monitoring”, Carta said.
The text as drafted by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) also modifies the automatic suspensive effect of appeals, which in the current law suspend any deportation of a migrant until a final judgement on the case is taken. The text approved wants to remit this decision to the judicial authorities on a case-by-case basis.
After the Parliament’s last vote, the final version of the bill will be negotiated with the member states and could become law in the coming months already, as the differences between the two stances are minimal.
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