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terça-feira, 2 de junho de 2026
EU negotiators reached a provisional agreement on a strict new Returns Regulation on June 1, 2026, designed to accelerate and streamline the deportation of third-country nationals staying illegally within the bloc.
EU
negotiators agree new migrant return law
EU
negotiators reached a provisional agreement on a strict new Returns Regulation on June 1, 2026, designed to
accelerate and streamline the deportation of third-country nationals staying
illegally within the bloc. The deal between the European Parliament and the
Council of the EU completes a core pillar of the EU Pact on Migration and
Asylum. It addresses a long-standing enforcement bottleneck, as fewer than 30%
of current EU deportation orders are successfully carried out.
Key
Pillars of the New Law
- Offshore Return Hubs: Member states can establish
deportation centers in non-EU countries to host rejected asylum-seekers.
These hubs can serve as transfer facilities or final destinations,
provided the host country respects human rights and the principle of
non-refoulement. Unaccompanied minors are strictly excluded from these
external transfers.
- Extended Detention Limits: Authorities can detain
individuals for up to 24 months to prevent them from absconding or if they
fail to cooperate. A further 6-month extension is possible under specific
shifting circumstances. Families and unaccompanied minors can only be
detained as a measure of last resort for the shortest possible timeframe.
- Strict Cooperation Mandate: Illegal residents face a
mandatory obligation to cooperate with national authorities.
Non-compliance triggers consequences such as reduced social benefits,
denial of voluntary return incentives, or criminal sanctions including
prison time where national law permits.
- European Return Order (ERO): The law introduces a
standardized European Return Order form to establish uniform documentation
across the bloc. While mutual recognition of return decisions between
member states will start as a voluntary measure, the European Commission
will reassess making it mandatory after three years.
- Security Risk Measures: Stricter rules apply to
individuals deemed a security risk. Member states can enforce entry bans
exceeding the standard 10-year limit—including permanent bans—and utilize
immediate prison detention.
Political
Context and Criticism
The
compromise was propelled forward through unusual legislative backing from
right-wing and far-right factions alongside the European People's Party (EPP)
within the European Parliament. Civil society groups and left-wing MEPs have
fiercely criticized the agreement, labeling it a draconian system that
compromises fundamental human rights and risks tearing families apart.
Next
Steps and Timeline
According to
official press releases from the Council of the EU and the European Parliament, the provisional text must now clear
final formal endorsements by both institutions. Implementation is scheduled to
begin immediately upon its publication in the Official Journal, though a
compromise clause delays the applicability of several complex provisions for 12
months
EU negotiators agree new migrant return law
EU
negotiators agree new migrant return law
Change
would allow countries to send people who’ve been ordered to leave EU territory
to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
June 1,
2026 11:06 pm CET
By Hanne
Cokelaere
Negotiators
on Monday agreed new rules to speed up and increase deportations from the EU,
including making it possible to send failed asylum-seekers to hubs outside the
bloc.
The text
is part of sweeping reforms the EU is rolling out to increase control over who
crosses its external borders and to support countries that receive the most
external migrants, with Monday’s agreement landing just days before other
migration and asylum reforms start applying on June 12.
Monday’s
agreement will help the EU regain control over “who comes to to the European
Union, but also who has to leave the European Union,” Migration Commissioner
Magnus Brunner said.
He
pointed to the rate of failed asylum-seekers who leave the bloc, which recent
Eurostat figures put around 27 percent. “We must give the people the feeling
back that we have control over what’s happening,” he said.
Under the
deal, countries will be allowed to send people who’ve been ordered to leave EU
territory to “return hubs” outside the bloc — an option several EU countries
are already exploring, but which civil society groups warn could open the door
to more abuse and human rights violations.
The text
also introduces stricter rules for dealing with people who are considered a
security threat; the possibility of home searches; long detentions; entry bans;
and penalties for those who don’t cooperate.
“For
years, Europe sent the worst possible message: even if you had no right to
stay, chances were high that nothing would happen. That era is ending. If you
have no right to stay in Europe, you will have to leave,” French MEP
François-Xavier Bellamy, who represented the center-right European People’s
Party in the negotiations, said in a comment.
Parliament
entered the negotiations with a position supported by the EPP, the right-wing
European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Patriots for Europe and
Europe of Sovereign Nations groups, despite opposition from lawmakers in
liberal and left-wing groups.
Monday’s
deal introduces a “legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology,” Greens
negotiator Mélissa Camara said in a comment. The French MEP slammed the text
for permitting hubs outside the European Union, the detention of minors, and
“home visits inspired by ICE practices,” referring to the controversial U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Talks
last month collapsed over disagreements on when the new measures should be
implemented. Under Monday’s deal, parts of the text will only come in after a
year, but some provisions, including measures allowing countries to establish
return hubs, will start applying immediately — a key point for countries that
are forging ahead with deals to establish them, including The Netherlands and
Germany.
Marta
Welander, EU advocacy director of the International Refugee Committee, said the
plans mark an “alarming new chapter in the EU’s approach to asylum and
migration.”
“This
deal will give governments much broader powers to detain and deport people. It
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,” she said.
Both the
Council and the Parliament still need to approve the deal.
Brussels’ nightmare French election scenario risks coming true: Bardella vs. Mélenchon
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Brussels’
nightmare French election scenario risks coming true: Bardella vs. Mélenchon
The far
right and far left are on the march, while France’s imploding centrists are
busy fighting each other.
June 1,
2026 4:01 am CET
By Clea
Caulcutt
PARIS —
Brussels’ nightmare scenario is no longer looking far-fetched: a French
presidential election next year in which both candidates in the runoff hail
from the political extremes and hold a deeply skeptical outlook on the EU and
NATO.
Jordan
Bardella of the far-right National Rally — the nationalist, anti-immigration
party of Marine Le Pen — has long been the favorite to win the 2027 race, but
mainstream centrist parties have been hoping they can find a unifying
challenger to beat him in the second round.
That
prospect of stopping Bardella has hit a major potential hurdle, however, as
momentum builds behind the campaign of the firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader
of the far-left France Unbowed party. The latest polls suggest he now has a
strong chance of qualifying for the second-round showdown — depriving the race
of a centrist who could rally voters against the far right in the EU’s No. 2
economy.
Mélenchon
draws much of his support from working-class and immigrant communities, and his
critics have condemned him for antisemitism and a “brutalization” of politics.
While it would be a major coup for him to reach the second round in 2027, most
polls predict he would then lose to Bardella by a landslide.
It’s an
election landscape that is already bringing the French center out in a cold
sweat.
“A lot of
people believe that if they have to choose between the France Unbowed and the
National Rally … it would be a nightmare. And I agree,” said Édouard Philippe,
a conservative, who is seen as the leading mainstream candidate in the race for
the Élysée.
Gérald
Darmanin, justice minister under liberal President Emmanuel Macron, also warned
that Mélenchon was now set to be the main challenger to the far right. “You
have … to be wearing blinkers not to see it,” he said.
Shock
polls
Last
week, two polls shook France’s political class.
The
first, conducted by Odoxa, showed Mélenchon neck-and-neck in second place after
Bardella with the center-right former Prime Minister Philippe. The second poll,
from Toluna-Harris Interactive, showed Mélenchon qualifying for the run-off
vote against the far right if there were too many candidates running in center
ground, including Philippe and another of Macron’s former prime ministers,
Gabriel Attal.
There is
no sign yet, however, that the prospect of being eliminated from the
presidential race is proving to be the electroshock therapy the political
center needs to start uniting around one candidate rather than dividing the
field.
The
center-right Philippe is locked in an intense rivalry with Attal, and neither
shows any indication they want to throw in the towel.
“The
competition with Gabriel Attal could be fatal,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political
analyst with the Sciences Po institute.
“If Attal
doesn’t pull out until the autumn, it might sharpen the appetites of those on
the left, who will start thinking we really can make it to the runoff against
the far right,” he said.
Comeback
kid
For
Mélenchon, the national polls are a dramatic comeback after having been largely
written off in the wake of his confrontational municipal election campaign in
March. Opinion polls repeatedly show that the 74-year-old radical leftwinger is
one of the most disliked French politicians.
But
Mélenchon has earned the reluctant admiration of rivals for his energetic
campaign since he announced in May that he was running in next year’s
presidential election.
On June
7, far-left supporters are planning a show of force at a rally in Saint-Denis,
an impoverished suburb north of Paris that the France Unbowed won in the local
elections.
“It’s
hard not to admit that Mélenchon has probably understood better than anybody
what a modern presidential campaign looks like,” wrote Stanislas Rigault, a
former spokesperson for the far-right Reconquest party of Éric Zemmour.
The
potential showdown between Mélenchon and the far right’s Bardella (or perhaps
Marine Le Pen, should she be permitted to run) is something that both camps are
trying to play up.
In recent
years, Mélenchon has repeatedly insisted that in the end it will be an “us
against them” fight against the far right as the traditional center-right and
center-left parties unravel. At the other end of the spectrum, members of the
National Rally said Bardella is convinced he will face Mélenchon or a leftwing
candidate in the second round of the presidential election.
In
France, the president is elected in a two-round vote, with the two candidates
with the highest share of votes in the first round going through to a run-off.
Both Le
Pen and Mélenchon are leaning into the fight and have already started sparring
online over the economy and the far left’s concept of a “new France” that the
far right says pits a new generation, many with migrant backgrounds, against
people of longer French ancestry.
Left out
For the
moderate left, Mélenchon’s rise has triggered alarm bells, given he’s highly
unlikely to defeat the current favorites on the far right. Indeed, polls have
put support for Bardella at more than 70 percent in a second-round showdown
with Mélenchon. Last week’s Toluna-Harris Interactive poll showed Bardella
winning against Mélenchon with 68 percent of the vote.
“Mélenchon
wants to be the king of the cemetery on the left,” said a Socialist Party
official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal politics.”We really
need to pull our finger out,” he added.
But the
center left has never appeared further from marshalling its forces.
Last
month, the Socialist Party came close to imploding when a third of its
leadership left over tensions between the party president Olivier Faure and a
key ally Boris Vallaud.
One of
the strongest presidential hopefuls for the left, MEP Raphaël Glucksmann tried
to gather momentum last week, with a book launch and multiple interviews. But
he has been weakened by doubts over his talents on the campaign trail and the
leaking in POLITICO of an internal memo that suggested he should avoid
targeting poor voters.
According
to Cautrès, the political analyst, who has studied Mélenchon’s multiple
presidential campaigns, the far-left leader is divisive but can also appeal
more widely.
“Mélenchon
is liked on the left because he’s abrasive, he doesn’t make concessions to
capitalism, but there are other aspects to his personality, he is well-versed
in history and he can see the bigger picture,” said Cautrès.
“He’s
softening his image… he knows how to run a presidential campaign,” he said.
Philippe
challenged
But it’s
not just the moderate left that is worried about Mélenchon’s popularity surge.
The
center right is also under threat.
In the
2022 presidential election, Mélenchon won close to 22 percent of the vote in
the first round of voting. That could well prove a very competitive level. In
the latest Odoxa poll, Bardella was seen winning the first round on 32 percent,
while Philippe was on 17 percent and Mélenchon on 16 percent.
Philippe’s
problem is that much of his energy is spent fending off competition from Bruno
Retailleau, leader of the conservative Les Républicains party, and the
hyperactive centrist Attal, who last month announced he was running for the
presidential election.
Most
recently, the rivalry between Philippe and Attal focused — somewhat bizarrely —
on whether they would be prepared to stand up on a table to make a point and
which of them was more like former President Jacques Chirac.
“Things
are complicated in the political center because its leaders are too busy
attacking each another,” said a person close to Macron.
“I’ve
heard a lot about who they are … and not enough about the country or any new
ideas,” the person added.
Supporters
of Attal and Philippe have said the two men — both of whom are former premiers
under Macron — will ultimately reach an agreement and unite behind a single
candidate.
But there
are indications talks might not be quite so straightforward.
In a
briefing with the press on Thursday, an adviser to Attal floated the
possibility that he could stay in the race until the end if the Mélenchon
threat receded. “That would change the game,” said the adviser.
“We have
to work on the assumption that maybe one or the other won’t withdraw,” said an
ally of Philippe.
With just
under a year to go before the presidential election, there’s still time to
settle differences. But in the meantime, the far right and far left are
asserting their grip on the race.
Giorgio
Leali, Sarah Paillou and Klara Durand contributed reporting.
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