The Save Europe Act, a European Citizens’ Initiative demanding that the political elite halt ‘replacement migration’, secure Europe’s borders, and protect the ethnocultural identity of European nations, has surpassed 100,000 signatures in only three days since its launch.
The initiative was launched by Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek with the goal of turning remigration into a Europe-wide political project.
Speaking to a reporter at the Remigration Summit in Porto, Portugal, held on 30 May, Vlaardingerbroek described the Save Europe Act as ‘essentially a legal proposal that we will send to the European Commission and demand that they transform into law.’
The Act’s main demands, Vlaardingerbroek said, are a total halt to non-European immigration—both legal and illegal—and the creation of a Europe-wide remigration system. The charter also calls for the removal of ‘social welfare incentives and benefits that function as pull factors for migration’ in order to reduce incentives for further migration, encourage remigration, and ‘lessen the burden on European taxpayers’.
The campaign is being organized through the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), the European Union’s official mechanism allowing citizens to place an issue on the European Commission’s agenda. Under current rules, an initiative that secures at least one million valid signatures from across the bloc must receive a formal response from the Commission, although Brussels is not legally obliged to transform the proposal into legislation. Organizers say the current campaign aims to build support ahead of the initiative’s formal registration process.
Besides calling for an end to further non-European immigration, the initiative advocates stronger border controls, faster deportations of illegal migrants, reforms to the EU’s asylum system, and the establishment of a coordinated European remigration framework. According to its supporters, these measures are necessary to preserve Europe’s national identities, cultural traditions, and social cohesion.
While not ruling out that the Commission could refuse to act even if the initiative reaches its target of one million signatures, Vlaardingerbroek argued that demonstrating the level of public support for remigration would itself be a significant achievement.
‘Things are going too slow here in Europe when it comes to immigration and especially remigration,’ she said. ‘Obviously, the borders are still wide open and nobody is being sent home. But the situation is deteriorating. We are about to become a minority in our own countries and we cannot just wait for politicians to save our lives.’
Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who rose into international prominence during the 2015 migration crisis by taking a hardline on border security and rejecting the EU’s wider open borders policy, also spoke out regarding the issue recently.
In a post on X on 2 June, Orbán called on supporters to sign the petition, stating that the act ‘aims to remind Brussels that Europe is not a waiting room for the world,’ rather it is ‘our home’.
‘For years, Brussels told Europeans not to worry about migration. Then they told us not to believe our own eyes. Now they’re telling us that opposing mass migration is racist and un-European,’ Orbán continued, adding that now, through the Save Europe Act, Europeans finally have a chance to say no.
The petition comes at a symbolic time, as the 12 June deadline for member states’ implementation of the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact nears. Negotiators from the European Parliament and member states has just recently reached a deal on the new Return Regulation, which would introduce a significantly more tough deportation framework across the bloc, including detention periods of up to 24 months, limits appeal-based deportation delays, expanded entry bans, increased penalties for non-cooperation, and the formal approval of return hubs outside the EU. Right-wing factions of the European Parliament welcomed the agreement, stating that it gives member states more power to deal with illegals than the previous one.
Yet, as the EU migration debate increasingly shifts to the right, with policies that were labelled ‘racist’ or ‘far-right’ a decade ago now becoming more mainstream, their practical implementation remains far slower than many argue is necessary to address migration-related challenges, particularly in Western European countries.
‘The petition comes at a symbolic time, as the 12 June deadline for member states’ implementation of the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact nears’
Anti-immigration sentiment is growing as seen from the protests raging in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain and other EU countries fed up with the establishment’s inability to act effectively. It is not a coincidence that the first countries of which 10,000 signatures sent from are the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, as they are among the most impacted societies across the bloc.
The momentum behind the campaign is also reflected in the recent launch of the Vienna-based Institute for Remigration by Austrian activist Martin Sellner, described by its founders as Europe’s first think tank dedicated exclusively to developing remigration policies and advancing the concept from a protest slogan into a comprehensive political programme.
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