Responding to the European Parliament’s vote on its position on the European Union (EU) Return Regulation today, Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said:
“Today the European Parliament has voted to expand the EU’s punitive and restrictive detention and deportation plans. This agreement – the result of a collaboration between the European People’s Party and political groups that support anti-migration policies – was rushed through negotiations without adequate scrutiny or meaningful human rights assessments.
“This marks a growing trend towards increasingly harmful, exclusionary, and draconian policies on migration, with worrying repercussions for due process and evidence-based policymaking. Far from reducing irregularity, these proposals risk trapping more people in precarious situations.
“Today, the European Parliament has voted to ramp up disproportionate requirements, sanctions and restrictions on people issued with a return decision, and to vastly expand its use of detention and for far longer periods, falling short of international legal standards.
“People will also risk being sent to ‘return hubs’ – offshore detention centres – in countries where they have never set foot. Amnesty International is unequivocal: return hubs carry grave risks of rights violations, cannot be implemented in a human rights compliant manner, and should be rejected in full.”
Background
The European Commission presented a proposal for a Return Regulation to replace the existing Return Directive in March 2025. In December 2025, Amnesty International warned that the European Council’s negotiating position on this proposal entailed “unprecedented detention, sanctions, and stripping of rights based on migration status.”
On 9 March 2026, the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee adopted its position on the Return Regulation. This followed rushed negotiations and votes on two different texts, including an alternative compromise by the European People’s Party with support from the European Conservatives and Reformists, Europe of Sovereign Nations and Patriots for Europe. It was this text that both received the LIBE Committee’s final support and was endorsed today as Parliament’s negotiating position on the reform.
Today’s vote paves the way for trilogue negotiations with the Council before the Regulation can be formally adopted. These are expected to advance quickly.
For further information please see:
Joint statement over 200 civil society organizations calling for deportation rules to be rejected
