The legislation, which includes the setting up of deportation centres located outside the EU, is designed to increase the low removal number of failed asylum seekers from the current 28 per cent.
Nicholas Watson
After a heated debate on Wednesday in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs voted by 418 to 218 in favour of legislation that tightens up the rules on failed asylum seekers and streamlines the deportation process.
The legislation contains provisions to force third-country nationals with a return decision to cooperate with the authorities and leave EU territory; the possibility of detention to prevent absconding; the removal to non-EU territory, including “return hubs”; and stricter rules for those who pose a security risk.
Removing irregular migrants with no right to remain has been a long-standing problem for EU countries. In 2025, the return rate was only 28 per cent, according to the European Commission, and this was still the highest return rate of the previous 10 years.
“With the Migration Pact [which came into effect in June] we secured the front door; today we secured the back door. The final piece of the European migration system is now in place,” Malik Azmani, a Dutch MEP rapporteur on the Returns regulation, told a press conference.
Today’s legislation, together with EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, is a response by European institutions and member states to growing concerns about the pace of migration to the bloc among EU citizens, who consistently rank it among their top priorities and support a common European policy on migration and asylum.
Though the rate of irregular migrants crossing Europe’s borders has been falling since 2021 – data from Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, show that such arrivals fell by 26 per cent in 2025 to almost 178,000, less than half that in 2023 – asylum claims in 2023 and 2024 still reached over a million each year.
The legislation was also in part a response by the European Commission to the rightward shift of the EU’s parliament following the last European elections in 2014. This divide was reflected in the response to the vote, which was cheered by MEPs of the right-leaning party groupings like Patriots For Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, but greeted with shouts of “shame on you” by MEPs from left-leaning parties.
“This regulation tells everybody that it is us and not the smugglers deciding who can stay in the European Union and who must leave,” said Magnus Brunner, the EU’s commissioner for migration.
The idea of setting up deportation centres outside the bloc, once a fringe idea, is a central piece of today’s legislation and such “return hubs’ are being actively looked at by countries such as Denmark, Austria, Greece and Germany.
“Our goal is to conclude the first agreements for the creation of these structures in 2026, so that they are operational from 2027,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister said on Sunday.
While seen by supporters as an important deterrent to migrants looking to illegally enter EU countries, the centres are controversial and have a poor track record of success. The Rwanda scheme of the previous Conservative government in the UK never got off the ground, while Italian-run facilities to process migrants in Albania have faced multiple legal challenges.
