EU moves policy for deportations and detention centres in third countries
MULTILATERAL ORGANISATIONS
3 JUNE 2026
- The European Union has moved forward with a vast overhaul of its migration policy, aiming to ramp up deportations and ink controversial deals to build detention centres abroad, in what rights groups compare to President Donald Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies in the U.S.
- “The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU,” said Nicholas Ioannides, Deputy Migration Minister for Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc.
- The deal was struck between the EU’s three main institutions — the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament — during a so-called “trilogue”.
- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the centre-right European People’s Party coalition, has said that the new measures will prevent a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, when about one million people arrived to seek asylum.
- Critics compared the regulation to the immigration strategy of the Trump administration, which has struck a series of secretive agreements with nations around the world to deport thousands of people to countries that are not their own.
- The United Kingdom also planned to deport migrants to Rwanda, but the plan was bogged down in legal red tape and the new government dropped the plan as soon as it came to power.
- At least five EU nations — Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Greece — are already in talks with third countries, mostly in Africa, to host “return hubs” on the model of Italy’s detention deal with Albania.
- The EU has continually tightened migration policies after right-wing parties took power in some countries in 2024.
