At the negotiations, disagreements arose over provisions on the establishment of deportation centers outside the EU, as well as the rights of police to search private homes. Substituting the substance of the disagreement on the sensitive issue of EU migration policy, MPs and diplomats focused on the timing of the regulation’s entry into force and agreed to return to the issue soon.
Controversial document
The regulation introduces tougher measures designed to speed up the expulsion of migrants staying in the EU illegally. Among the measures:
- Establishment of deportation centers outside the EU;
- longer detention periods;
- entry bans for third-country nationals who do not have the right to remain in Europe.
After three rounds of talks in Strasbourg, the negotiators stopped the discussion and decided to return to it on June 1. According to several sources present at the meeting, the only unresolved issue is the deadline for the law to enter into force.
While parliament insists on immediate enactment, member states are pushing for most of the regulation’s provisions to become applicable only after two years. A number of governments argue that they need time to adapt their systems to the new rules.
At the same time, diplomatic sources told Euronews that preliminary agreements have already been reached on all other issues, including the most contentious ones.
“Given the urgency of the migration situation, we strongly opposed proposals to postpone the application of the regulations for one or even two years. Such delays are in no way justified,” European People’s Party (EPP) negotiator François-Xavier Bellamy told Euronews.
Not all parliamentarians are happy with the text. Melissa Camara, an MEP from the Greens/European Free Alliance group who participated in the negotiations, sharply criticizes the law, calling the meeting “a travesty of negotiation.”
“Instead of pushing for a decent and humane document, they chose to focus on a ridiculous squabble about when the text will start to apply,” she said.
A tough course
According to the preliminary text, national authorities would be allowed to search the “residence or other relevant premises” of irregular migrants. This norm is being compared by NGOs and civil society representatives to the infamous raids by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ICE.
Any search of a dwelling must be “based on a prior judicial or administrative decision” and be “proportionate and duly justified by the urgency of the search,” they emphasize.
The law also allows EU countries to return irregular migrants to third countries unrelated to their country of origin, provided there are bilateral agreements with a non-EU state on the establishment of so-called “return centers” on its territory.
This point was never put up for negotiation, as it was fully supported by both the Parliament and the European Council. Some Member States have already joined efforts to establish return centers outside Europe, as the Italian government is implementing such a project in Albania.
Both parliamentarians and EU countries have also favored the possibility of deporting families with children to third countries, making an exception only for unaccompanied minors.
At the same time, the negotiators excluded from the draft a controversial provision supported by the European Parliament that would have allowed negotiating with unrecognized entities in third countries on readmission issues.
The initiative was heavily criticized because it could have led to cooperation with undemocratic regimes such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, although the EU is already engaging on these issues with troubled governments in Libya, Egypt and Syria.
Moldova abandons deportation centers
Moldova has so far categorically refused to host European deportation centers (“return hubs”), but is actively involved in reforming Europe’s migration field as a transit and border state.
The Moldovan authorities have officially denied any plans to establish extraterritorial centers for asylum seekers rejected by the EU.
The country’s leadership emphasizes that Moldova is not seen as a platform for deportation hubs, unlike Albania, and national resources are focused exclusively on managing its own migration flows and integrating refugees from Ukraine.
The diplomatic platform in May 2026 on migration policy was the Council of Europe conference. Chisinau found itself at the center of discussions on pan-European migration policy. At the informal ministerial conference, according to sources in the European Commission, a Political Declaration on Migration and Human Rights was adopted.
Official Chisinau supported the need to combat the compression of illegal migration channels and human trafficking, while insisting on compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights and recalling that the country is creating its own digital system for tracking and deporting foreigners staying in Moldova illegally.
This helps Moldova maintain its visa-free regime. The authorities have learned well that only the clear implementation of European directives on readmission (taking back its citizens) allowed the European Commission to confirm the stable visa-free status of Moldovan citizens in the Schengen zone.
At the same time, EU ministers who came to Chisinau, such as Denmark and Belgium, used the platform of the ministerial meeting to make tough statements about the need to revise humanitarian conventions in order to simplify deportations. The rhetoric of the opponents of soft migration policy was confirmed by the provisions of the new migration legislation
Migration policy innovations
The law will increase the maximum period of detention for illegal migrants awaiting deportation from six months to two years. Moreover, for persons who pose a security threat, the periods may be unlimited. Bans on re-entry to the EU for those expelled will increase from five to ten years, and lifetime bans will be possible for those deemed to be a security risk.
Parliament and member states have even agreed to change the automatic suspensive effect of appeals. Right now, any deportation of a migrant is automatically suspended pending a final court decision. The new law intends to leave the decision to suspend to the discretion of the judiciary on a case-by-case basis.
One Course on Migration
Despite the postponement of negotiations, Parliament and the Council are showing complete unity in their intention to toughen their approach to irregular migration, and reaching an agreement on June 1 seems quite realistic, experts say.
The European Commission, which insists on the need to increase the share of returned migrants, intends to achieve final approval of the regulation before the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum enters into force in mid-June. According to the latest Eurostat data, about 28% of migrants ordered to leave Europe actually return.
Once an agreement is reached, the final text will have to be formally approved by both the European Parliament and EU countries. Left-wing factions are certain to vote against the law, and most of their MPs have already expressed doubts about its compliance with basic human rights.
