“The age of Willkommenskultur is over”—EU Parliament Approves Landmark Deportation Law

The European Parliament’s Strasbourg plenary on Wednesday voted for the final adoption of the EU’s landmark deportation directive, the Returns Regulation. It is meant to harmonize and streamline EU-wide voluntary and involuntary return rules in an effort to ramp up lagging deportation numbers, as only about one quarter of failed asylum seekers are actually made to leave the EU. 

The directive is not formally part of the flagship asylum legislation known as the Migration Pact, which entered into force last week, but is rather meant to complement it after member states and right-wing parties criticized the Pact for failing to address shortcomings in the deportation department. 

Now that is set to finally change. The Parliament adopted the final text with 418 votes in favor and 218 against, one of the clearest consequences of the surge of national conservative parties in the 2024 EU elections. “The age of Willkommenskultur is over, the era of mass deportations has begun,” commented the Sweden Democrats party, whose MEP Charlie Weimers played a central role as ECR’s shadow rapporteur.

Done deal: Mass deportations from Europe will soon become reality✈️ pic.twitter.com/rQ66WpZL3P

— Charlie Weimers MEP 🇸🇪 (@weimers) June 17, 2026

In a rare show of unity on the European Right, the directive was adopted not only by the national conservative groups (PfE, ECR, and ESN) but also the EPP, which votes together with the leftist parties in the vast majority of cases. EPP members, especially the German ruling party CDU, seem to have finally caught up to the reality of voter expectations and seek to regain people’s trust by swerving more towards the right on immigration.

“The EPP has managed to shake off the Stockholm syndrome it was suffering from to support the demands of the Patriot forces,” said Jordan Bardella, president of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group. 

Patriots’ shadow rapporteur on the file, Dutch MEP Marieke Ehlers, who also “played a leading role” in finding a consensus acceptable for both sovereigntist parties and EPP, which replaced an earlier, much weaker text that was meant to be adopted via a leftist-EPP coalition.

“Now there is a consensus to harden Europe’s migration policy,” Bardella said, with PfE Vice President Kinga Gál adding 

All this would not have been possible without the Patriots.

🚨 | The Patriots have delivered.

Return hubs. No more endless legal delays. Power back to our capitals.

Europe finally has a Return Regulation that sends illegal immigrants home. We fought for it. We won it. pic.twitter.com/fUf4zgrkVa

— Patriots for Europe (@PatriotsEP) June 17, 2026

Once the Council also approves the final text, the Returns Directive will fully enter into law on July 1st, 2027, meaning that EU countries will have one year to prepare technical, legal, and administrative infrastructure ahead of full implementation.

What’s new in the Returns Regulation?

Most importantly, the new law will introduce a mutual recognition and enforcement obligation between member states regarding deportation orders, meaning migrants cannot circumvent return decisions by moving to a different EU country and restarting the process. A return order in one country will legally count as a valid order in all of them. 

The Directive also allows for much longer detention of migrants with pending deportation orders, although only in certain cases (such as flight risks, lack of cooperation, or security concerns), increasing the maximum time from 3 months up to 24 months with sufficient reasoning. 

This is intended to ensure that migrants do not disappear within the EU while authorities process paperwork and wait for destination countries’ acceptance. The problem, however, is that under the Migration Pact, minors or anyone with any health (including mental health) conditions are not allowed to be detained under any circumstances, a provision that will undoubtedly be abused.

Another important point is the introduction of third-country return hubs, making it possible for member states to externalize return procedures by sending migrants to secure facilities outside EU territory to wait for the end of the process, ensuring they won’t escape implementation once the paperwork’s done. 

While this is one of the most controversial aspects of the law, it’s still not nearly as tough as most member states and conservative parties originally demanded. The initial idea was to make the same format available for arrival procedures as well, which would have ensured that asylum seekers only step on EU soil once they’ve been granted asylum. If refused, they would already be in place for deportation back to their home countries. 

However, the Commission would simply not agree to this version, going with the much more limited scope that allows for only holding migrants with already issued return orders, while the Migration Pact prohibits the effective closure of borders and forces member states to conduct arrival and asylum procedures inside their territory.

Last, the directive introduces longer and potentially indefinite entry bans for illegal migrants deemed a national security risk. This provision has also been watered down in the final text, as the Parliament’s original proposal would have allowed lifetime bans for those who repeatedly try to enter the EU illegally or refuse to cooperate with authorities and try to circumvent return decisions. 

Right-wing parties wanted to impose a lifetime entry ban after just one illegal entry (emulating the ‘Australian model’), but this wasn’t even considered. In its current form, the Migration Pact does not criminalize illegal entries at all but forces member states to apply normal asylum procedures to migrants caught on their territory, the same as if they applied for asylum legally at the border.