Meeting in plenary session on Wednesday 17 June, the European Parliament unsurprisingly approved the provisional agreement on the reform of the ‘Returns’ Regulation, resulting from negotiations with the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 13879/4). The vote passed with 418 votes in favour, 218 against, and 30 abstentions.
Replacing a 2008 Directive, the new Regulation is intended to speed up the removal of rejected asylum applicants, whose current return rate stands at no more than 28%. It establishes an EU-wide harmonised framework for the implementation of return orders, removing the automatic suspensive effect of appeals and introducing permanent exclusion orders for profiles deemed threatening.
Above all, and this was the flagship measure of the text, the EU is authorising itself to use ‘return hubs’ in third countries, to which migrants staying irregularly will be transferred pending their readmission to their country of origin. The maximum length of administrative detention on European soil is also being increased to 24 months.
At a press conference after the plenary, the lead rapporteur, Malik Azmani (Renew Europe, Dutch), welcomed this victory after several months of trilogues, saying he was “proud” to have championed a text that is “firm where necessary and protective where it matters”.
“After decades of failure and years of deadlock, Europe is ending its powerlessness in the face of illegal immigration”, added François-Xavier Bellamy (EPP, French), the true architect of Parliament’s negotiating mandate, in a statement. “The rules are now in place, the responsibility lies with governments to use them”, he added.
Renew Europe divided to the very end. Although successful for Mr Azmani, these negotiations nevertheless highlighted clear divisions within his own political camp, and the final vote confirmed this: nearly half of Renew Europe’s MEPs (33 out of 77) opposed or abstained from voting on the text presented by their rapporteur.
Belgian MEP Yvan Verougstraete, a vehement opponent of the text, did not fail to reiterate his indignation: “This text marks a worrying setback for European values”, he said in a statement, denouncing “the strengthening of coercive measures and the inadequacy of the safeguards surrounding certain return procedures”.
As the majority in the Chamber refused to examine the amendments in plenary session, the attempt by French MEP Fabienne Keller to exclude families with children from the scope of the return hubs (see EUROPE 13885/18) ultimately failed.
Fundamental rights, Achilles heel of the reform? Questioned again by the press on respect for human rights, the rapporteur insisted on the presence of “safeguards” in several Articles, in particular the one relating to return hubs (Article 17), which specifies that “such agreements or arrangements may only be concluded with a third country where international human rights standards and principles (...) are respected”.
Moreover, he dismissed any parallel with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), describing the argument as “political framing from those who are opposing this Regulation” following the withdrawal of Article 6, which explicitly allowed searches of private spaces.
Behind the scenes, the co-legislators are already expecting actions to be brought before national courts, or even the Court of Justice of the European Union, according to our information. In a statement, Mélissa Camara (the Greens/EFA Group, French) has already said that her Group would come “in support of these actions, in the name of human dignity”. Several Social Democrat elected representatives also said they were ready to lend political support to these initiatives.
The text must still receive the formal approval of the Council of the EU before it can definitively enter into force. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)