The European Parliament voted on Thursday to adopt a new EU Returns Regulation, making it easier to deport illegal immigrants and rejected asylum seekers. The vote—passed with 389 votes in favor, 206 against, and 32 abstentions—followed the Civil Liberties (LIBE) Committee’s approval on March 9, where a center-right/right-wing coalition pushed the text forward, breaking from the usual centrist majority.
Sweden Democrats MEP Charlie Weimers (ECR), who brokered the deal in committee, was elated after the vote:
This is the Sweden Democrats’ biggest negotiating success ever in the European Parliament. It will now be easier to send illegal immigrants home, people who should not be in Europe.
The goal is to make it easier and faster to return third-country nationals who have no legal right to stay in the EU—primarily rejected asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. The overall aim of the new regulations is to boost the currently abysmal EU return rate (only around 20-30% of issued orders are actually carried out) by streamlining procedures and reducing legal limbo.
Conservatives hailed the vote as a necessary step to restore control, deter illegal immigration, and respond to public opinion after years of mass immigration, failed integration, and migrant crime.
The Left, including migrant-supporting NGOs, called it a “punitive” rollback of rights, warning of longer detentions, offshore processing risks, and potential violations of human rights. Catholic charity Caritas said the regulations would “further stigmatise and criminalise migrants” and focus on “punitive and violent methods” rather than voluntary returns. Swedish MEP Alice Bah Kuhnke (Greens/EFA) called it “a day of sorrow” and said, “we are taking a step closer to ICE forces in the EU.”
Key elements of the returns regulations
- Faster and more efficient returns: Mutual recognition of return decisions across member states (if one country orders a return, others must enforce it more readily).
- Return hubs: Explicit support for establishing facilities in third (non-EU) countries to process and hold people awaiting deportation. This builds on ideas like Italy’s Albania model.
- Longer detention: Up to 24 months in certain cases, especially for those who don’t cooperate, pose a flight risk, or threaten public security.
- Expanded options: Easier returns to safe third countries (even without a direct personal link), home searches/raids in some scenarios, and stricter entry bans.
This vote opens the door for formal negotiations with the Council of the EU. If a deal is reached quickly, the new rules could apply from around mid-2027, providing a vast improvement on the 2024 Migration and Asylum Pact framework, which is already being phased in and emphasizes faster asylum processing alongside returns.
The shift reflects a changing mood across Europe and is a late-coming but welcome response to years of public demand for tougher controls on migration.
Whether this new approach will actually boost deportation numbers will depend on the final wording of the rules, fresh bilateral agreements with countries of origin and transit, and how effectively individual nations put it all into practice.
