Following in Trump’s footsteps… Europe tightens immigration and deportation policies policy

The European Union has reached a broad agreement to reform immigration policy, in a step aimed at accelerating the deportation of immigrants who do not have a legal right to remain within the bloc’s countries, and establishing detention and deportation centers outside the Union’s territory in cooperation with third countries.

The agreement was reached during a meeting that included the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Parliament, in what European officials described as an attempt to address one of the most controversial issues within the continent.

The Independent newspaper quoted Cypriot Deputy Immigration Minister Nicholas Ioannidis as saying that the new rules will speed up the procedures for returning people who do not have the right to legal residency, and will also raise deportation rates, which are low compared to the number of rejected asylum applications.

Detention centers raise controversy

The new rules allow member states to conclude bilateral agreements with countries outside the European Union to establish what are known as “return centres”, where rejected migrants are detained in preparation for their deportation.

The newspaper notes that Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece are already in talks with other countries, most of them in Africa, to host these centres, similar to the agreement Italy concluded with Albania regarding immigration detention.

But human rights organizations strongly criticized these measures, considering that they were close to the policies followed by the administration of US President Donald Trump in the immigration file.

Sylvia Carter, spokeswoman for the International Cooperation Platform for Irregular Migrants, said that Europe, instead of benefiting from the lessons learned from the controversial US deportation policies, is moving toward building a similar model. She warned that the new rules could lead to a more stringent system of detention and deportation across the continent.

French MP Melissa Camara also expressed her rejection of the agreement, describing it as a “historic decline” in the field of human rights within the European Union, noting that the new legislation opens the door to the detention of minors and the expansion of monitoring and deportation procedures.

Right-wing tendency and human rights concerns

The Independent newspaper believes that the agreement reflects a continuing trend towards tightening immigration policies within Europe, especially after the rise of right-wing parties in a number of European countries during the European Parliament elections in 2024.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended the new measures as a way to prevent a repeat of the asylum crisis that Europe witnessed in 2015, when about a million asylum seekers and migrants arrived on the continent, most of them fleeing wars and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.

The newspaper says that irregular migration flows over the past years have contributed to strengthening anti-immigration political discourses within Europe, in a manner similar to the escalation of anti-immigration sentiment in America during recent election campaigns.

Humanitarian organizations warn that new migration reforms may undermine the guarantees stipulated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Warnings

On the other hand, humanitarian organizations have warned that the new reforms may undermine the guarantees stipulated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and increase the risks of deporting people to countries where they may face persecution, torture, or gross human rights violations.

The newspaper concludes that the new reform represents an important shift in European immigration policy, but at the same time it raises widespread concerns about the balance between controlling borders and combating irregular migration on the one hand, and protecting the basic rights of migrants and asylum seekers on the other hand.