The European Commission has outlined proposals to increase deportations of people with no legal right to stay in the EU, but critics said it had opened the door to “prolonged detention” of people with plans for offshore detention centres.
The plans for a European returns system published on Tuesday came after EU leaders demanded “innovative solutions” to deal with undocumented migrants, in response to gains made by the far-right in last year’s European elections.
The commission said it was proposing “effective and modern procedures” that would increase returns of people denied asylum or who had overstayed their visa. Only one in five people without the right to stay are returned to their country of origin, a figure that has changed little in recent years.
The draft regulation, which would have to be agreed by EU ministers and MEPs, would create a European Return Order, to ensure that an order to leave a member state would function as an order to leave the EU.
People deemed to be a flight risk could also be detained for up to two years, compared with 18 months under existing law.
The regulation also imposes conditions on EU member states seeking to strike deals with non-EU countries to create offshore centres for deported people, otherwise known as “return hubs”. Unlike Italy’s agreement with Albania, or the previous British government’s Rwanda deal, EU return hubs would not be used to hold asylum seekers, only people denied the right to stay.
EU governments negotiating such deals would have to ensure respect for fundamental rights, including no pushbacks, according to the draft legal text. Unaccompanied minors and families with children would also be excluded from such arrangements.
The International Rescue Committee said many questions remained unanswered, including how long people would be forced to stay in the centres and how the EU would ensure their rights were safeguarded in non-EU countries.
“While it’s unclear exactly what form the EU’s proposed return hubs would take, we do know that its existing migration deals with non-EU countries have resulted in thousands of refugees and other migrants being exposed to violence, abuse, exploitation and death,” said Marta Welander, the EU advocacy director at IRC.
The plans were welcomed by the centre-right European People’s party, but the Greens and the left raised concerns.
Tineke Strik, a Dutch Green MEP on the European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee, said return hubs would “inevitably lead to prolonged detention and pose very real practical and legal risks when it comes to upholding fundamental rights under other countries’ judicial systems”.
She added that the use of return hubs “shifts responsibility for taking care of people needing to return from the EU to third countries” and distracted from working on efficient return procedures and cooperation with countries of origin.
European Commission officials said EU countries negotiating “return hubs” would have to respect EU law and international human rights standards precisely “to avoid the situation of having a legal limbo”, but did not confirm whether the two-year limit on detention would apply outside the bloc.
Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president in charge of security, said migration had been exploited by populists for political gain: “When people with no right to stay remain at the EU, the credibility of our entire migration policy is undermined.”
Magnus Brunner, the body’s commissioner for migration, rejected comparisons with Italy’s Albania deal or the abandoned UK-Rwanda agreement, because return hubs would not apply to asylum seekers.
Questions remain over which countries would agree to host return hubs, which would be negotiated by EU member states, rather than Brussels. Brunner said: “Whether we find the third countries as well, that is a question of agreements and negotiations.”
Last year, just over 1 million people sought asylum in Europe’s border-free Schengen area, an 11% decrease on the previous year, but the second straight year that asylum claims exceeded 1m since 2015-16, according to the European Union Agency for Asylum. In 2024, only 42% of asylum claims were accepted.
The EU last year passed a sweeping set of measures to manage migration, which are mostly yet to be implemented, but was unable to agree on an updated deportation law. The commission promised to fill that gap, after the far-right made big gains in the 2024 European parliament elections, which were widely perceived to be in response to migration.
