The European Parliament passed its return regulations’ vote on Monday, now pending a final green light before the controversial bill can make way for the construction of ‘return hubs’ for asylum seekers in countries outside the EU
Gaia Neiman
The European Parliament is set to vote on the EU’s deportation bill on Wednesday (17 June) after passing through at the committee level earlier this week.
The parliament’s version of the bill was broadly drafted by a right-wing faction of plenary, effectively sidelining the lead MEP on the file, Dutch Renew Europe MEP Malik Azmani.
Yet at a plenary debate in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Azmani still attempted to frame the fractured internal negotiations as harmonious.
“I’m particularly grateful for the constructive cooperation that has characterised these negotiations,” he told the plenary, adding that he now stands fully behind the latest text.
The European People’s Party (EPP) under the French leadership of François-Xavier Bellamy had marginalised Azmani in early March after presenting an alternative text on the bill that was backed by the hard right.
Bellamy, speaking after Azmani, promised the bill would restore order and return control over the external borders. “This is reflected in the part of the text that I proposed, the EPP proposed, which we’ll be voting on tomorrow,” he said.
Bellamy’s ally in the bill, French far-right MEP Fabrice Leggeri who is facing a complicity in crimes against humanity probe, tried to score political points.
Leggeri attacked Ylva Johannson, the former EU commissioner for migration, for defending migrant rights at a time when he headed the EU’s border agency Frontex and where he buried fundamental rights abuses.
“The automatic suspension of numerous appeals and returns to hubs outside the European Union was something which no one had dreamed of a few years ago,” he said.
Aside from giving police enforced powers to raid homes to seek out undocumented migrants, the bill also allows for lengthy detentions (two years) and provides the legal framework for EU states to offshore processing centres for asylum seekers awaiting deportation.
The toughened regulations, agreed politically between the council, representing member states, and the parliament two weeks prior, contain elements that significantly escalate what Renew previously proposed, yet it is expected to sail through its final vote in plenary without much amendment.
Renew has been the most divided party on the issue, abstaining from initial voting and now mostly succumbing to the right’s demands, albeit a consistent tenacity in debating the necessity of including migrant children in the new regulations.
