Negotiations are already likely to start on the EU’s controversial deportation bill following a plenary vote on Thursday (26 March), as rightwing political forces continue to pounce on migration.
Outflanked by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), progressive and left-leaning groups are facing a bitter setback as they appear unable to gather enough votes to block the proposal.
Recent media reports revealing the EPP’s quiet coordination with far-right parties to toughen measures against migrants ordered to leave the EU have only deepened frustration on the left.
“This vote is crucial,” says Mélissa Camara, a French Green MEP who wants the vote delayed until April.
Murielle Laurent, of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), said the negotiations had been cut short — and replaced by a coalition of the far-right.
Yet the political groundwork for these decisions was already laid years ago, when French MEP Nadine Morano took the lead on behalf of the EPP to crush the European Commission’s original 2018 proposal for a return directive in order to usher in more restrictive measures.
In the lead-up to the file being scuppered, Morano said an agreement was needed with rightwing forces to curtail what she described as a “migratory flood”.
Although the parliament had managed to broadly reach internal compromises on the file by its chief negotiator, Dutch Green Tineke Strik, Morano suddenly imposed new conditions that led to a renewed deadlock.
"The more far-reaching proposals didn't come from her anymore, but from the whole EPP group, which she even didn't want to defend or didn't care about," an EU source told EUobserver in late 2023.
The Morano-imposed deadlock was most likely done in anticipation that a new European Parliament would swing further to the right on migration.
Rightwing parliament
Indeed, the 2024 elections saw far-right forces gain considerable ground, with the nationalist Patriots for Europe (PfE), led by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, becoming the third-largest group after the EPP and the S&D.
EU states by then had already reached their position on the directive, which had primarily focused on voluntary returns.
But the mood had also since soured as politicians ramped up public frustrations over statistics that claimed only one-in-five migrants ordered to leave, actually left.
This oft-cited “one-in-five” figure paints a misleading picture, as some return decisions are counted twice, while others leave voluntarily from other EU states without ever being registered as a return.
Several EU states then started to push for a new more restrictive position in the 2024-2029 legislature.
The Greeks, for instance, had openly called for an EU regulation on the issue, a legal instrument that takes immediate effect across all member states.
The European Commission delivered and repealed the 2018 directive. It then put forward a regulation in March last year that included setting up deportation centres abroad — in the hopes of appeasing member states fearful of an anti-migrant electorate.
Dutch liberal Malik Azmani of the Renew Europe group was tasked to lead negotiations on behalf of the parliament.
Only days before a crucial vote at the civil liberties committee, Azmani's press team told EUobserver that a cross-party compromise had been reached on the bill.
Nikolaj Nielsen