New EU migration policies expected to get even tougher in 2025

The new policy proposals, expected to strengthen the new EU pact on migration and asylum, could be ready as early as February, reports the news and politics magazine Politico, citing three unnamed European Union diplomats.

The proposals are expected to be a priority for the new EU Commission, which has moved slightly further to the right with its new lineup, reflecting the voting patterns of EU member states.

The new EU pact on migration and asylum was voted in just at the end of the last legislation and is due to be implemented by 2026 at the latest. Some member states like Spain and Germany have proposed implementing aspects of it sooner, during 2025, to try and get a grip on the EU’s migration policies across the bloc.

Countries like Italy and Poland, led by Giorgia Meloni, who heads a right-wing coalition, and Donald Tusk, leader of a centrist Liberal party that has kept many conservative migration policies from the previous PiS government, have been putting pressure on the EU to tighten some aspects of its migration policy.

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Deportations and detentions?

The new rules are expected to define the rights and obligations of migrants who have exhausted all legal options to stay in the EU and provide clarity on the rules for their potential deportation to third countries, Politico reported.

According to Politico, the EU’s proposals include potentially “restricting the freedom of movement of migrants” who are issued with deportation notices by ordering them to “check in” to a migrant center. The news platform did not make clear whether this would mean actual detention or daily or weekly reporting to a local police station or similar until the day of their deportation.

If enforceable, this measure might avoid the disappearance of the majority of migrants who have had their asylum claims rejected or have for other reasons no rights to stay in the EU.

According to the European Conservative, just 19 percent of migrants EU-wide are actually returned to their home countries after being issued with such a notice. The vast majority of them end up staying within the EU, often dropping out of the legal systems, and sometimes moving countries, to try for asylum again in other EU member states.

Although the Dublin regulation provides for EU member states to return asylum seekers attempting to seek asylum in a second EU country, returning them can be difficult to enforce. Frontline countries like Italy are not always keen to take these people back, and the migrants who have moved on often want to stay in an alternative EU country. Reasons include family connections, better job opportunities, or access to welfare benefits that may be less available in Mediterranean nations, especially if they have had their claim refused.

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Return to third countries

The European Conservative newspaper also points out that trying to convince third countries like Tunisia or Turkey to accept back migrants who had been staying in those countries for some time before attempting to reach Europe might be very difficult. Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has repeatedly said he will not be a dumping ground for the EU and will not accept third-country nationals.

Turkey, which already hosts millions of Syrian migrants, also doesn’t generally accept returns of nationals who are not originally from Turkey. Reports of summary pushbacks of migrants who enter without papers from Iran back across the border are also fairly frequent.

The organization Human Rights Watch highlighted this practice in 2022, and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, ECRE, wrote a country report on Turkey in August 2024, in which they said that the overall number of irregular migrants decreased in 2023 because of increased border controls at Turkey’s border with Iran.

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Allegations of pushbacks and controls in Turkey

In 2023, a wall stretching 1,160 kilometers, and covering most of Turkey’s borders with both Iran and Syria was completed, as well as a 1,234-kilometer patrol road. “Work on the remaining 20 percent continues,” noted ECRE.

This border, states ECRE, has 341 electro-optic towers, 284 thermal cameras and 151 elevator towers. There are 139 armored surveillance vehicles and seismic sensor systems deployed along these borders.

In 2023, Turkey estimated these increased controls prevented around 230,000 migrants from entering Turkey’s borders, and around 38,000 in the first quarter of 2024.

According to ECRE, Turkey has increasingly introduced “restrictive measures and arbitrary detention and deportation practices” particularly aimed at single Afghan men attempting to enter through Turkey’s border with Iran who are either issued with a T1 form, indicating they will be deported, or they are “being pushed back without being provided any official form.”

Once a T1 form has been issued, their details are stored on a system and it prevents them from applying for international protection within Turkey. The decision can only be challenged via a judicial appeal, reports ECRE.

Most of the migrants in Turkey sent to administrative removal centers tend to be from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to ECRE. At the centers, they do have the possibility to apply for international protection, but the majority are pushed back to Iran, states ECRE. However, the organization also notes that “it is very hard to follow the location of people and almost impossible to have any proof of the pushback.”

The allegations of pushbacks reported by ECRE and other organizations in Turkey are largely contrary to domestic and international law. The widespread use of off-shore asylum centers is also legally speaking in question, following several EU-court judgments expressing doubt that for instance a country can be declared unilaterally safe. This is partly what is holding up the Italian strategy since the Italian courts referred up to the EU courts to make a decision. Meanwhile ,the Italian government has launched an appeal against the Rome tribunal on migration, which legal experts believe could take up to a year to work its way through Italy’s labyrinthine legal process.

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Czech-Danish initiative

Despite the legal questions, and criticism from countless human rights organizations, an unnamed EU diplomat suggested to the European Conservative that the current pressure from many EU member states for stricter measures might be too great for Brussels to ignore.

“A few years ago, these positions [regarding swifter deportations and establishing off-shore asylum centers] were perceived by many as too problematic. The Commission didn’t want to hear about it. Now it’s mainstream.”

Some of these new measures reportedly stem from a Czech-Danish initiative begun in May this year. Officials from the two countries wrote a joint letter in May proposing that migrants picked up in the Mediterranean should not be allowed to set foot in the EU. Rather, they would be immediately taken to centers, like the ones in Albania, for processing and potential deportation if their claims were rejected.

The letter, published by the Czech daily Hospodarske Noviny, was signed by 15 countries. Germany, France and Spain did not sign, reported the Italian news agency ANSA.

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The deterrence effect

The letter also called for all migrants issued with deportation notices to be held in similar facilities outside the EU. However, obtaining an agreement for these kinds of centers would rely on third-party countries willing to host them. Albania for instance has underlined several times that its agreement should remain solely with Italy, because of the close ties between those two countries.

However, even under the current Italy-Albania agreement, only migrants picked up in international waters, ie not on national (Italian) territory, are eligible to be taken to the Albania centers, and also only those who are deemed not to be in any way vulnerable.

Nicola Molteni, Undersecretary of State at Italy’s Interior Ministry told European Conservative that he believed that outsourcing and relocating asylum processes had a threefold function. “To fight more effectively the criminal organizations dedicated to human trafficking, as a deterrence tool against illegal departures, and as a means of relieving migratory pressure on the countries first entry, such as Italy, or Greece or Spain or Malta.”

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed admiration for Italy’s Albania plan in the past. Some other EU leaders have also been observing with interest whether processing asylum seekers in third countries might be possible. The EU had hoped that this kind of strategy could be more widely adopted, but the scheme has been plagued by legal battles and setbacks, and so far, no potential asylum seekers have actually stayed in Albania long enough to be processed.