File image of migrants arriving in a small boat on the Greek island of Lesbos (Image: Getty)
The European Union has pressed ahead with plans to set up deportation centres outside the bloc as lawmakers backed tightening up immigration rules. The European Parliament voted to ease the setting up of the “return hubs”, meaning any EU nation can now negotiate on its own or in small coalitions to deport migrants not to their home countries but to facilities yet to be built outside the 27-nation bloc.
Hailing the tougher migration measures, Charlie Weimers, a lawmaker from the right-wing Sweden Democrats, said: “There is a new consensus in Europe. The era of deportations has begun.”
Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Denmark have already entered into negotiations with governments, mainly in Africa, to host sites to hold migrants denied asylum. Members of the European Parliament voted 389-206 in favour, with 32 abstentions, on Thursday.
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People arrive in Lesbos in small boats in 2015 (Image: Getty)
Right-wing parties made an alliance with far-right groups that they had previously shunned to pass the measure, while parties of the left and centre voted against, the AP news agency reports.
The measures aim to accelerate the returns of rejected asylum seekers.
The proposals also reportedly include harsher penalties, including detention and entry bans, for those who refuse to be sent to the so-called return hubs.
Human rights groups have criticised the move, saying migrants are being pushed back illegally at EU borders, while legal protections are increasingly being hollowed out.
Marta Welander, EU advocacy director for the International Rescue Committee, said the vote was “a historic setback for refugee rights”.
She warned it would “pave the way towards a new punitive EU asylum and migration regime, designed to deter, detain and deport people seeking safety. »
“The EU should stand for a system that protects lives, not one that criminalises survival,” she added.
French lawmaker Mélissa Camara, who voted against the measure, said it passed only by centrist groups allying with the far-right.
“History will remember that the so-called moderate right-wing group sounded the death knell of what remained of the cordon sanitaire,” she said, arguing the return hubs are places far from Europe “where fundamental rights cannot be effectively monitored”.
It comes as the British Government remains under pressure to bring down the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.
Some 41,472 made the treacherous journey in 2025 — the second-highest annual total on record, with 722 in the seven days up to Wednesday.
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