On Monday 26 January, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) held an exchange of views with Johannes Luchner, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Migration and Home Affairs (HOME), on readmission agreements and the return policy for third-country nationals residing illegally in the EU.
Mr Luchner pointed out that the Commission currently has a mandate to negotiate 25 readmission agreements with third countries, 18 of which have been concluded and 6 non-binding arrangements. Joint committees and working groups have recently been held with Guinea, Ethiopia, Côte d'Ivoire, Bangladesh, Armenia and Pakistan, while workshops have been held with Egypt, Côte d'Ivoire and Ethiopia.
The Director General considers cooperation with the Western Balkans and Eastern partners to be “satisfactory” and points out that it has improved with Bangladesh, justifying the withdrawal of proposals for restrictive measures on visas in November 2025.
Against this backdrop, some MEPs have questioned the number of migrants being returned, which is still considered to be too low even though the number of agreements is increasing. “Only around 20% of third-country nationals who have been ordered to leave the EU are actually repatriated”, pointed out Charlie Weimers (ECR, Swedish). For him, “the existence of an agreement clearly does not guarantee high return rates”. He pointed out a notable difference between the approaches: the comprehensive strategic partnerships with Egypt and Tunisia, covering border security and combatting smuggling above and beyond simple readmission, seem to be producing better results.
Lena Düpont (EPP, German) explored this question in greater depth by asking about the practical use of the visa mechanism by the Member States: “Are they ready and willing to use it in the best way possible?” was her concern. From this point of view, Mr Luchner acknowledged that improvements were needed, including the digitisation of case tracking and the centralisation of data on missing documents.
Birgit Sippel (S&D, German), for her part, questioned the real benefits of legal migration for the citizens of the target countries, particularly Afghanistan: “Are we talking about the interests of a government [...] or of citizens?”. A concern shared by Jan-Christoph Oetjen (Renew Europe, German): “How can we ensure that people who are sent back do not face death or sentences which are unacceptable by European standards?”.
MEPs also condemned the lack of automaticity in Article 25a of the EU Visa Code, which makes it possible to restrict the granting of visas to nationals of third countries that do not cooperate sufficiently in the readmission of their nationals illegally present in the EU. They are calling for restrictive measures to be triggered automatically. Mr Luchner replied that “until very recently, we didn’t know who was in the EU and who wasn’t” (a situation that will change with the ‘entry/exit system’), and that true automaticity would be “extremely difficult to establish”. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)