{"id":1003571,"date":"2026-06-03T22:55:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1003571\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T22:55:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:55:02","slug":"europe-enters-the-era-of-deportations-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1003571\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe enters the \u2018era of deportations\u2019 | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe era of deportations has begun.\u201d A few months ago, this line from far\u2011right Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers sounded like a provocation. Now, after the agreement on the EU\u2019s new Return Regulation between Parliament, the member states and the Commission, it reads more like an accurate description of the European Union\u2019s political direction<\/a>. With the legal framework for sending migrants to deportation camps outside Europe nearly complete, several member states \u2014 Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece \u2014 have intensified their search for countries willing to host them, mainly in Africa, far from the European continent, according to diplomatic sources. The political battle is over; the geographical one is just beginning.<\/p>\n

Human\u2011rights organizations have criticized the new regulation \u2014 which comes on top of other already tough measures \u2014 and compared the EU\u2019s trajectory to the aggressive immigration policies of Donald Trump\u2019s administration<\/a> in the United States. \u201cThis regulation will create a draconian system of detention and deportation,\u201d says Silvia Carta, policy officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM).<\/p>\n

NGOs warn it will expose hundreds of thousands of people to imprisonment in migrant detention centers<\/a> in third countries for an indefinite period (within the EU, the maximum period will be 30 months), as well as family separation and transfers to countries they do not know and with which they have no ties. \u201cAcross the Atlantic we see the violence and fear generated by the brutal enforcement of immigration law by ICE. Europe should learn from the harms of that model, rather than build its own version,\u201d Carta added.<\/p>\n

The European Commission insists the new regulation, together with other measures, will help increase the number of removals of applicants who have not been granted asylum. Today, just 28% of migrants whose applications are rejected return to their country of origin, according to Eurostat data that Brussels repeats constantly. Supporters argue that deportation camps would serve both as a solution and as a deterrent. \u201cWith the new rules, we have more control over who can come to the EU, who can stay, and who needs to leave,\u201d said Interior and Migration Commissioner M<\/a>agnus Brunner<\/a>, who supports a tougher European migration policy.<\/p>\n

The decisive question now is whether this strategy can overcome the obstacles that doomed previous initiatives, such as Italy\u2019s model in Albania, where it opened facilities to send asylum seekers that have cost billions and that, for now, have been a failure. The legislation is nearly finalized; what remains is whether member states can actually find places to open these deportation centers.<\/p>\n

Cyprus\u2019s deputy minister for migration and international protection, Nicholas Ioannides, said on Tuesday the general idea is to create them in areas possibly in Africa or Asia. \u201cNot near Europe\u2019s borders,\u201d Ioannides said, stressing that, in any case, host countries must guarantee the rights of those deported.<\/p>\n

Dutch liberal MEP Malik Azmani, the European Parliament\u2019s lead negotiator \u2014 though the final text was drafted by the European People\u2019s Party with support from further\u2011right groups \u2014 has not ruled out agreements with non\u2011EU Eastern European countries, though he agrees Africa is the most likely destination. In any case, he said, it is up to interested member states to negotiate.<\/p>\n

There is urgency to negotiate. Diplomatic sources say the legal framework to open deportation camps could be ready before the summer. \u201cEvery month of delay is a month that the system keeps failing,\u201d Azmani argued. \u201cEurope cannot afford another period of standstill,\u201d he said at a news conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Both Azmani and Ioannides \u2014 whose country holds the rotating EU Council presidency this semester \u2014 stress that the text, significantly tougher than the European Commission\u2019s original proposal and reflecting the continent\u2019s shift to the right<\/a>, represents the position of a large majority of member states and MEPs on migration.<\/p>\n

They noted in several meetings with the press that evidence of this is the fact that several countries are already actively discussing how to set up these centers in third countries. Ioannides said he is confident that more states will join that list over time.<\/p>\n

But the same fact also shows how little progress has been made so far \u2014 \u201cfor the moment there are no tangible results,\u201d Ioannides acknowledged in a meeting with a small group of journalists in Brussels, including EL PA\u00cdS. Even the basic parameters of these centers are not yet defined.<\/p>\n

The EU insists that the new law sets a \u201cred line\u201d: respect for the fundamental rights of migrants transferred to a third country, which must guarantee those rights. But what that means in practice remains unclear. For example, if families with children end up in these centers \u2014a possibility opened by Parliament and now included in the final text \u2014 how will their education be guaranteed, given that they come from different countries, have been deported from different EU states<\/a>, and will end up in a third country with which they have no connection and from which it is unclear when they will leave, since the law does not set a maximum stay?<\/p>\n

Even the terminology is unsettled. It is unclear how to define people who are forcibly transferred \u2014 \u201cdeported\u201d or \u201creturned,\u201d depending on Brussels\u2019s preferred language. There is reluctance to call them \u201cdetained,\u201d but the measure points in that direction, at least in practice, since they will not be free to leave the facility except to return to their country of origin, and no time limit has been set for how long they can be held. Even that, sources admit, is still unclear.<\/p>\n

With the agreement reached, Ioannides said there is now \u201cthe necessary legal framework in place\u201d for these detention centers, but admitted there are still \u201cpractical and logistical issues\u201d to resolve.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe era of deportations has begun.\u201d A few months ago, this line from far\u2011right Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1003572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2740,32,2000,299,5187,2440,15812],"class_list":["post-1003571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-africa","tag-donald-trump","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-ice"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116688645494694965","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}