EU deportations law: final talks expand repression

On 1 June, the European Commission, Parliament and Council are set to finalise negotiations about the new EU Return Regulation, the EU’s flagship initiative to escalate deportations across the Union. This should be the last meeting before the final – largely formal – votes in the Parliament and Council later this month.

Based on documents leaked by transparency watchdog Statewatch and our own information, lawmakers are set to agree on a text that:

• NEW! Encourages member states to deploy new “investigative measures” which leave high discretion for authorities to raid private homes and other “relevant premises”;
• NEW! Extends the duration of immigration detention up to 30 months, if authorities consider that there’s a “reasonable prospect of removal” and risk of absconding – including for children;

For the rest, the leaked document largely confirms previous positions, including:

• Opening the door for member states to set up deportation centres or other informal arrangements with countries outside the EU – including for families with children – leading to accountability and human rights monitoring challenges, risks of chain deportations towards unsafe countries, arbitrary detention and numerous other violations of human rights and international law;
• Turning forced returns (deportations) into the default option for people found in an irregular situation, despite the higher risk of violence and fundamental rights violations, further restricting people’s agency and options;
• Requiring member states to impose geographical restrictions or reporting obligations for all people in the return procedure, or any oher measures restricting their freedom of movement defined in national law;
• Despite creating the conditions for overcrowded detention centres, introducing “emergency” possibilities for member states to disregard safeguards during detention such as limiting judicial review of detention decisions, including for families and children, when there are “exceptionally large numbers” of people awaiting their deportation.
• Introducing severe punitive measures, such as entry bans of disproportionate duration that could be determined at national level (including potentially permanent bans in cases where security risks are invoked), financial penalties, reduction of financial assistance to rebuild a life after their deportation, and even criminal sanctions for people who do not cooperate towards their deportation;
• Introducing specific derogations from fundamental rights for migrants who are considered a risk for national security and public policy, further blurring the lines between criminal law and migration while reinforcing dangerous stereotypes;
• Reinforcing the false assumption that all people who are not eligible for asylum should be immediately deported, creating a system which heavily sanctions being undocumented and which could make it more difficult to access  humanitarian, family and work permits.

Based on our information, the key outstanding point concerns the entry into force of the law, with lawmakers likely to agree on frontloading certain articles, including an immediate implementation of return hubs.

Silvia Carta, Advocacy Officer at PICUM, said: “This Regulation is going to create a draconian detention and deportation machine. In the latest round of negotiations, EU lawmakers doubled down on repression and punishment and agreed on a text that will expose hundreds of thousands of people to harm and violence – from locking people up in immigration detention for up to 30 months to tearing families apart and sending people to countries they don’t even know. Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement. Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it.“