The European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs is expected to unveil the draft of a new legislation on migration this week, which will contain provisions for increased deportations of rejected asylum seekers. Though the European Commission has been briefing journalists to the contrary, the law is also widely expected to establish the legal foundation for so-called ‘return hubs’ outside of the E.U.
Migration – irregular migration in particular – is one of the most pressing political issues around Europe. As far-right parties continue to make electoral gains, largely propelled by Europeans’ growing anxieties over irregular migration, there is tremendous pressure on the European Union to address the perceived problem. The upcoming legislation appears to have been somewhat rushed amid this political background, according to some observers in Brussels, with the Commission having apparently not conducted much in the way of impact assessments or engaged with civil society on the proposed law.
The draft will try to address a problem that European policymakers have been grappling with for a while. That problem is essentially the tension between, on the one hand, the obligations the E.U. and individual members states are under to offer people the possibility of seeking asylum in their territories, with, on the other hand, the growing demands from far-right parties and their supporters to reduce the amount of people arriving in Europe.
Individual countries have already tried to resolve this tension by pursuing schemes to keep people off of European soil while still nominally offering them the chance to seek asylum in Europe. The most well-known of these schemes was pursued by the United Kingdom (no longer a member of the E.U), which sought to send asylum seekers – particularly those crossing the English channel in small boats – to Rwanda, for processing there. That scheme – which likely would have violated various U.K. and international human rights legislation – was scrapped before it began. At the same time, however, Italy has been pursuing a similar scheme with Albania, so far to very limited success.
Despite these failures, the related idea of using non-E.U. territories as centers for deportation of rejected asylum seekers – or ‘return hubs’ – has become popular among many European policymakers, who have been urging their own governments and the E.U. itself to consider such schemes. So far, the European Commission has been telling journalists that this upcoming legislation will not include the establishment of so-called return hubs. That does leave room, however, for the legislation to allow individual member states to pursue their own return hub arrangements with third countries, rather than return hubs being established at the E.U. level.
The legislation is also expected to include provisions for tougher immigration enforcement in a number of different ways, including expanded use of immigration detention, sanctions for non-cooperation with deportation orders, entry bans, and other punitive measures designed to dissuade people from trying to seek shelter in Europe. NGOs and civil society groups have long condemned such measures – not least the possibility of return hubs – arguing they violate Europe’s humanitarian and legal obligations and degrade the fundamental rights afforded asylum seekers.
The European Commission, for its part, has previously stated the aim of the new law is to make the process of deporting rejected asylum seekers more efficient and harmonize the system across the 27 member states. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has spoken about the need for a new legal framework to meet the perceived challenges of the day.