By embracing offshore deportation centres and further criminalising migration, the EU proves the far-right doesn’t need to win power to be in power

The European Parliament’s approval of the new Return Regulation marks another dark chapter in the construction of Fortress Europe.

Presented as a measure to make deportations more “efficient”, the legislation allows European Union member states to establish so-called “return hubs” in third countries, effectively exporting responsibility for asylum seekers beyond Europe’s borders. It also grants states wider powers to detain people and further expands a system that treats migration not as a human reality, but as a security threat.

For years, Europe’s political establishment has responded to humanitarian crises by adopting ever more policies borrowed from the far right. Rather than confronting the wars, poverty, climate breakdown and economic exploitation that force people to flee their homes or to live in squalor in Europe, Brussels has chosen deterrence, detention, and deportation.

This legislation will not stop migration, it will merely make migrants more vulnerable and Europe less democratic, in a move clearly appeasing the far-right.

The creation of offshore “return hubs” echoes policies pursued elsewhere that have been widely condemned by human rights organisations. Outsourcing asylum responsibilities to third countries removes suffering from public view while allowing European leaders to claim they have regained “control”.

Meanwhile, the growing criminalisation of migrants risks turning ordinary citizens into suspects and communities into spaces of surveillance and fear. The EU claims to be defending its values, when in fact it is demolishing them.

Migration is a natural phenomenon, with millions of Europeans having experienced the uprooting consequences of poverty and violence, as well as discrimination and persecution in the United States, Australia, and dozens of other countries where they went in pursuit of a better life. Now their offspring have the audacity to treat others with the same, and worse violence that their grandparents were received with. The irony becomes particularly biting when one considers the financial and environmental policies, as well as the wars that are triggering the waves of migration were pursued by the very same politicians who then demonise those looking to flee the unlikeable conditions they created. 

By adopting this legislation, the European Parliament has once again surrendered to the politics of fear and legitimised the agenda of the far right. Every concession made in the name of “toughness” only shifts the political centre further towards authoritarianism.

DiEM25 rejects this logic. Europe does not need more walls, detention centres and deportation schemes. It needs policies that address the root causes of displacement, protect human dignity, and build inclusive societies based on solidarity and shared prosperity, rather than scapegoating.

A democratic Europe cannot be built by abandoning those seeking safety. It can only be built by defending the rights and dignity of all.

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