The EU’s controversial return regulation passed by an overwhelming majority, splitting the centrist parties and creating new alliances in the European Parliament with toughened measures bringing Brussels’ border policies closer to the right.
Gaia Neiman
Far-right MEPs in the plenary in Strasbourg on Wednesday (17 June) chanted “send them back”, with some pumping their fists, after the EU’s deportation bill was voted through with a clear majority.
“It’s up to them how they want to yell and scream. It’s not my type of politics, it’s not how I am as a politician,” responded Dutch MEP for Renew Europe Malik Azmani, who steered the file on behalf of the European Parliament, speaking to reporters after the vote.
The controversial regulation promises to kick out rejected asylum seekers, detain people for up to 24 months (and possibly even 30), send their biometric data to home countries, while allowing EU states to set up deportation hubs in countries outside of Europe.
The plenary vote held in Strasbourg concluded the informal agreement made between the parliament and the council, representing member states, on earlier this month.
Under the new legislation, rejected asylum seekers could be forcibly removed from EU territories to an external ‘return hub’, echoing demands by EU states to create so-called “innovative solutions” on par with Italy’s outsourced migrant facility in Albania.
Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers, the vice-chair of the rightwing European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) that had been pushing for this reform, hailed “the era of deportations has begun” as his coalition bringing the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the hard-right Patriots for Europe together with the unlikely allies of a fractured liberal Renew Europe and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill.
