“The deportation rate rose from 19 percent in 2023 to 27 percent in 2025 in the first three quarters of the year. This means we expect to reach the highest deportation rate since 2019 in 2025,” EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner told German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag this week.
As Europe’s efforts to control migration and ease worries that fuel far-right movements intensify, the European Court of Human Rights is being questioned, reinterpreted, and even ignored when making national migration policies. But is this approach going to keep numbers down?
EU Migration Policy: Relocations Inside the Bloc
The EU has continuously stepped up its efforts for a more restrictive form of migration policy to be achieved across the bloc, but such a contentious issue that presents each country with a different set of challenges is not easy to navigate.
In 2025, the Pact on Migration and Asylum aimed to offer “a comprehensive approach” for all member states. The plan has an external pillar, focusing on border control and third-country partners to stop departures. The internal pillar requires aiding states at the EU’s external borders, expanding Frontex operations, and starting a solidarity pool, which would redistribute migrants across member states.
The Pact is still taking shape. Laws introduced in December stated the bloc must increase its deportations, create lists of ‘safe third countries’ and ‘safe countries of origin’ to determine where deportees should go, and set the solidarity pool’s parameters at €430 million ($500 million).
To ease the controversy around the solidarity pool, new measures introduce three options for contribution: relocations, funding, and alternative measures.
While the size of the solidarity pool is still a matter of negotiations, it would involve taking asylum seekers from countries “under migratory pressure”: Spain, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. Another group, determined to be “facing a significant migratory situation,” could get total exemption: this includes Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Croatia, Austria, and Poland.
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have already challenged migration quotas and refused to take part in the solidarity pool, neither by taking in relocations nor contributing funds – so this approach is still on shaky ground.
External Option: Deportations and Third Countries
For the external aspects, the Pact also introduced the ‘third country concept’ to EU legislators as a new focus for deportation policy. This emphasized the externalization of preventive measures to major transit states as well as deportations.
Through various partnerships with countries like Libya, Egypt, and Algeria, the EU promotes the deportation from these departure states to keep migrants from making the dangerous crossing across the Mediterranean. This means sending Frontex officers or financing local border control and deportation efforts.
The Common European Return System means those asylum seekers whose claim was rejected by one state will be recognized as a rejection for the whole bloc and will result in the deportation of the migrant to their home country. However, many times, with no return agreements in place, migrants cannot go home.
Return hubs in ‘third safe countries’ would be an intermediary, where these deportees could stay instead of the EU with hopes of convincing them of a voluntary return. The hubs are also a deterrent for those thinking about making the journey to the EU.
The idea has been floating around EU channels, but December’s legislation made it official policy.
Migrant Rights and the ECHR
Many rights groups have questioned the idea of return hubs: in September, over 250 migrant rights organizations called for the rejection of the new deportation and return policies.
The default detention of rejected asylum seekers in a third country for an indefinite amount of time and the requirement of identity documents or a fixed residence to avoid detention, they argued, are unreasonable and pave “the way for vast surveillance, discriminatory policing and racial profiling practices.”
Migrant rights are also under scrutiny, with many countries questioning whether the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)’s interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights is still up to date “in a globalized world where people migrate across borders on a completely different scale.” Italy and Denmark spearheaded a movement involving nine European countries calling for the reinterpretation of the treaty to allow for swifter deportation of criminal migrants during the spring.
Denmark reiterated this view in December and was joined by the UK this time in calling for faster reforms to stop the rising populist control over the issue.
Denmark: “We are Taking the Lead”
Denmark, the country that has become the beacon for those looking for an example of a tough migration agenda, stated the court reforms were necessary to remain democratic and that they’d be willing “to use our democratic mandate to launch a new and open-minded conversation about the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights,” recognizing it would take time.
But, in her new year’s address, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen confirmed she finds the progress too slow: “Instead of waiting several years for it to take effect in court practice, we are taking the lead and implementing legislation before the summer.”
Other countries have also begun to establish return hubs: the Netherlands have a signed agreement with Uganda, Denmark and Italy could also revitalize their earlier attempts, while Germany is already in talks to establish hubs.
“It’s a sort of turning point for our asylum and immigration policy, and we see the positive impact already,” Brunner said.
But many experts say the restrictive measures will only encourage smuggling operations further.
“In a perverse sense, a smuggler or a smuggling enterprise requires a border restriction — because if there isn’t, migrants manage by themselves,” Mark Micallef, head of the North Africa and Sahel Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime told The Financial Times.
“When it comes to the implementation of a proper economic route for migrants, which would literally take the business out of the hands of smugglers, we don’t seem to be able to come together and really implement it,” he says. “You would think that it’s a win-win situation, because there is no question that Europe needs the labour.”
But controlling or predicting migration is impossible. Lukas Gehrke, head of the UN International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) global office in Brussels, says that “we need a longer period to really see how flows or the direction of flows go.”
Frontex data shows the EU’s illegal migration routes have calmed, with most routes decreasing. But whether this will continue or be enough remains to be seen.
