EU agrees migration overhaul allowing deportation centres abroad

European Union negotiators have signed off on a sweeping rewrite of the bloc’s migration rules that will make it faster to deport people who have no legal right to stay and will explicitly allow member states to build and run detention centres in third countries. The provisional agreement, struck late on Monday in a trilogue between the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European Parliament, marks the most significant hardening of EU migration law since the 2015 crisis.

What the regulation does

The text, which still requires formal endorsement by the Parliament and the Council, introduces a legal basis for so-called return hubs, facilities located outside EU territory where migrants can be held while their removal is arranged. At least five governments, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece, are already in talks with countries in Africa to host such centres, modelling them on the arrangement Italy concluded with Albania in 2024. The regulation also shortens procedural deadlines, expands the grounds for detention, and permits authorities to conduct home visits to locate people slated for removal, a practice critics say mirrors tactics used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister for Cyprus, which holds the rotating Council presidency, presented the deal as a practical necessity. “The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU,” he said. The Commission has argued that the current return rate, below 20% of removal orders, is unsustainable and that the new rules will close the gap between decisions and executions.

The Italy-Albania template

Italy’s protocol with Albania, signed in November 2024, provides for two centres on Albanian soil operated by Italian authorities, with a combined capacity of 3,000 people. The first facility opened in October 2025; the second is under construction. The European Commission gave the deal a green light after securing assurances that fundamental rights would be respected, but the European Court of Human Rights has already received applications challenging the arrangement. The new EU regulation effectively generalises that model, allowing any member state to negotiate its own bilateral agreement without needing a separate EU-level mandate.

Legal scholars point out that the regulation does not require the third country to be a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, only to offer “adequate guarantees”, a formulation the Court of Justice of the EU has previously treated with scepticism. The Commission says it will monitor compliance, but enforcement mechanisms remain vague.

Political arithmetic behind the deal

The agreement did not emerge in a vacuum. After the 2024 European Parliament elections, right-wing and far-right parties increased their share of seats, and several national governments, including those in the Netherlands, Italy and Finland, shifted to coalitions that campaigned explicitly on stricter migration control. The centre-right European People’s Party, led by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, aligned with the European Conservatives and Reformists and Identity and Democracy groups to push the text through, overriding opposition from the Socialists & Democrats, Renew Europe and the Greens.

Von der Leyen has repeatedly invoked the 2015 crisis, when roughly one million people arrived in the EU, mostly fleeing the Syrian civil war. She argues that the new framework gives the Union the tools to manage future surges without repeating the chaotic border closures and internal recriminations of that period. Critics counter that arrivals have fallen sharply since 2016 and that the regulation responds to political pressure rather than operational necessity.

Rights groups sound the alarm

Silvia Carter, spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), did not mince words. “The Regulation is going to create a draconian detention and deportation machine,” she said. “Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement. Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it.”

Marta Welander of the International Rescue Committee warned that the legislation “looks set to normalise immigration raids, expand the use of detention in prison-like facilities outside EU territory that are essentially legal black holes, and increase the risk of people being deported to countries where they could face persecution, torture or worse.” The regulation permits detention of families with children for up to six months in certain circumstances, a provision the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has previously said violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A historic setback, says the Greens

Mélissa Camara, a French MEP sitting with the Greens/European Free Alliance, called the deal “a historic setback” for human rights in the bloc. “The legalisation of return hubs outside the European Union, the green light for the detention of minors, home visits inspired by ICE practices: the legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology is now complete,” she said. Camara highlighted that the trilogue mandate was negotiated behind closed doors, with limited input from civil society, and that the final text was only circulated to MEPs hours before the vote in the responsible committees.

The Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) is expected to vote on the text in the coming weeks. Given the political composition of the new Parliament, approval is considered likely. The Council will then adopt the regulation at ministerial level, probably before the summer recess.

Legal challenges already forming

Several NGOs have announced they will seek an annulment action before the Court of Justice of the EU once the regulation is published in the Official Journal. The primary arguments will centre on the compatibility of extraterritorial detention with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, particularly Articles 6 (right to liberty), 18 (right to asylum) and 19 (protection against removal to risk of torture). The Court’s 2023 ruling in the HM case established that member states remain responsible for rights violations committed in facilities they control abroad, but the new regulation attempts to codify a different standard.

The European Data Protection Supervisor has also flagged concerns about the data-sharing provisions that accompany return-hub agreements, noting that the regulation allows transfer of biometric and health data to third-country authorities without adequate safeguards.