Médecins du Monde and PICUM warn new EU migration regulation puts healthcare at serious risk

In March 2025, the European Commission proposed a Returns Regulation expanding immigration detention, deportation, externalisation, racial profiling, and surveillance of undocumented migrants. In a new report, Médecins du Monde International Network and PICUM warn that the proposal threatens the right to health and violates medical ethics, urging EU lawmakers to reject it and promote rights-based migration policies that protect people rather than punish them.

The European Commission’s proposal facilitates the collection, access and exchange of data on third country nationals’ vulnerability, health and medical needs, among other information, between EU member states (article 38), and between EU and non-EU countries to enforce deportation operations (articles 39 and 41).

Decisions on transferring personal data, including sensitive health data, of third-country nationals are left to national authorities and, where relevant, Frontex. No mention is made of independent medical professionals, data protection authorities, or judicial oversight in assessing the risks or justifying the data transfer. When data is shared outside the EU, people risk having their personal data being misused in countries where human rights protections are weak.

This proposal is in direct contrast with Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which guarantee the right to privacy and the protection of personal data for everyone in the EU, including undocumented people.

In multiple judgments, since at least 2000, the European Court of Human Rights has held that collecting or storing health data by public authorities, even if not used, interferes with the right to privacy (Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights) and breaches medical confidentiality.

Medical professionals and civil society organisations have also contested EU and national migration enforcement and deportation policies that jeopardise the right to health and compromise medical professional integrity.

In 2024, the Standing Committee of European Doctors, which represents national medical associations across Europe, denounced how doctors have faced governmental pressure to break patient-doctor confidentiality and report names of patients seeking their care to identify undocumented migrants.

In Italy, campaigners are asking doctors to stop declaring anyone fit for immigration detention. In Belgium, Médecins du Monde and other NGOs appealed to the Constitutional Court against a law that allows physical coercion for mandatory medical examinations in return procedures during WHO-declared public health emergencies. In Sweden, over 4,000 health care workers pledged to commit civil disobedience and refuse to report their patients should the government introduce reporting obligations in the healthcare sector.

Besides concerns linked to the sharing of health data, the draft Regulation jeopardises people’s health and wellbeing in the following ways. The proposal:

• The proposal calls for an escalation of immigration detention across the EU, including for children (despite international standards indicating that immigration detention of children is never in their best interests), expanding the grounds for detention and extending its maximum length from 18 to 24 months. Research shows that any period in immigration detention harms people mental and physical state and various international bodies and courts have emphasised the disproportionate effects of immigration detention on physical and mental health .
• only requires the provision of “emergency health care” and “essential treatment of illnesses” (article 34) in immigration detention centres, and otherwise largely ignores detention standards beyond a general obligation to provide access to “open air space” (article 34).
• expands the grounds for forced deportation, including with coercive measures (article 12(4)), with little consideration of medical needs during the deportation procedures, and to countries where people may face torture or other forms of violence. The text also allows for the creation of deportation centres outside the EU, with unclear oversight over conditions and human rights standards.
• explicitly pushes for detection of people based on their residence status (Article 6) thereby promoting harassment, violence, and racial profiling.

PICUM and Médecins du Monde call on EU lawmakers to reject this text and instead uphold the universal right to health and respect medical ethics; promote safe and regular migration pathways; and ensure access to secure residence permits.

The European Parliament’s civil liberties committee should start discussing its negotiating position in November. The EU Council is expected to vote on its negotiating position by the end of 2025.

QUOTES:

Louise Bonneau, Advocacy Officer at PICUM, said: “Punitive migration measures have already cost lives. History shows where persecution leads, and this Deportation Regulation risks repeating those mistakes: it isolates people, blocks access to healthcare and undermines public health. EU lawmakers must stop it.”

Federico Dessi, Executive Director at Médécins du Monde Belgium, said: “Turning healthcare into a migration control tool is a profound violation of medical ethics and undermines patient safety. Doctors and health workers are bound by a duty of care and confidentiality, yet the use of sensitive health data for deportation and compulsory medical examinations directly undermines this duty. If patients fear that seeking treatment will expose them to deportation, they will delay or avoid care altogether, with devastating consequences for individual and public health. At the same time, expanding immigrant detention, despite the well-documented damage to mental and physical health, puts people at even greater risk.  We urge EU lawmakers to reject measures that compromise medical integrity and the right to health for all.”

NOTES TO THE EDITORS:

• An embargoed copy of the report can be found here.
• The number of people living in Europe irregularly is uncertain and estimates vary. Recent research suggests that between 2.6 and 3.2 million undocumented migrants resided in 12 European countries (including the UK) between 2016 and 2023. These estimates place migrants in an irregular situation at less than 1% of the total population and between 8% and 10% of those are born outside the Schengen Area (for EU countries) or the Common Travel Area (for Ireland and the UK).
• This report follows a recent statement by over 240 organisations calling on EU lawmakers and member states to reject the draft Return Regulation.