Expel migrants who are on European soil to countries other than those from which they originate. This is the proposal that the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU has put on the table and that the Interior Ministers of the 27 will debate this Thursday in Luxembourg. Far from calling into question the violation of human rights that this model of expulsion can entail, the music sounds good for the majority of Member States, who are demanding an update of the Returns Directive in force at the current time and even of the proposal that the European Commission launched in 2019 and remained in to wait for due to the lack of agreement in the European Parliament.
The far-right government Viktor Orbán, responsible for organizing the debates on the 27th of this semester, is proposing a renewal of this legal framework, confronting the hardening of the position displayed by a majority of member states. Seventeen of them supported a document promoted by the Netherlands and Austria which aims to impose “obligations and duties” on people found undocumented on EU territory, even going so far as to speak sanctions for those who do not cooperate.
“An element that should receive due attention when updating the legal framework is the broadening of the definition of return authorizing, as a last resort and taking into account different guarantees, returns to another third country (i.e. ‘i.e. other than the country of origin or transit). , or to which the returnee decides to return)”, indicates the document that the Hungarian presidency sent to the 27 and in which it recalls that this approach was already in the position of the Council of the EU during the previous negotiation.
The argument put forward by the Hungarian Presidency is that this decision “should contribute to increasing the effectiveness of returns in the event of a lack of cooperation from the third country of origin or transit, or when the returned person himself does not not cooperate.” The idea is therefore to put pressure on migrants to accept expulsion to the countries from which they fled, so as not to be sent to others where they have no roots. The proposal also mentions the possibility for Frontex to participate in these expulsion processes to third countries.
Beyond the tightening of rules that this measure would already entail, there are governments which have already taken the plunge, such as the case of Orbán himself, who this Wednesday in the European Parliament assured that “without centers hot spot “We are not going to be able to control illegal immigration in Europe.” “Once someone enters the border, we will not be able to deport them later,” he said. The intention of many European governments is to adopt the UK’s “Rwandan model” or the one that Giorgia Meloni’s Italy has already agreed with Albania to outsource asylum procedures. In practice, this means creating detention centers for refugees while asylum applications are processed in the EU.
Non-EU detention centers
The Hungarian presidency thus includes the request from 15 European governments of different colors – from the far right to Danish social democracy – to seek “innovative ways” to manage migration. “Although the Council has not yet discussed the concrete details and implications of such solutions, many delegations have highlighted the value of exploring the concept of return centers in safe third countries,” the document says.
To carry out this type of agreements, the EU emphasizes the need to cooperate with these third countries, which normally have millions at their disposal to control migratory flows, despite the verification of human rights violations. And there, the Hungarian presidency calls for a “more strategic use of positive and negative resources”. The carrot and stick theory was applied to these international “partners”. Among the proposals aimed at achieving “a positive change in the behavior of third countries” are the visa liberalization policy or the establishment of commercial leverage policies.
The Spanish government is reluctant to consider the position adopted by the majority of European states, whose hardening coincides with the rise of far-right forces on the continent. “We must implement what we have agreed,” say government sources in reference to the Pact on Migration and Asylum concluded in December and which has two years to develop from a legal point of view. “The pact already includes measures in this direction. There is a return procedure concerning borders, resources, the right to remain in the territory, etc. which must now be implemented”, explain these sources about the acceleration of returns, another of the obsessions of the 27. “There is other work in progress which can be proposed, of mutual recognition of the decisions of return that we defend, but in This time, this pact represents a step forward,” they say.
