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EU: Council of the European Union: Draft Council Conclusions on EU Return Policy - Adoption

26 May 2014

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"the Council recognises that voluntary return is not always a viable solution and that a potential resort to forced return is an equally important element of a credible return policy. In that respect the Council acknowledges that national forced-return monitoring systems can contribute to correctly executed returns and transparency."

See the full text: Council of the European Union: Draft Council Conclusions on EU Return Policy - Adoption (20 May 2014, pdf)

Earlier version of the: Draft Council Conclusions on EU Return Policy (14 May 2014, pdf) and: Draft Council Conclusions on EU Return Policy (7 May 2014, pdf)

See also: A highly inappropriately titled Council document: "An effective EU return policy": Presidency's food for thought paper for the lunch discussion (pdf):

"The term 'voluntary return' includes different types of programmes, from those that are genuinely voluntary to those that are options of last resort, meaning that illegally resident migrants facing the possibility of forced removal prefer the 'voluntary' return instead... only few third country nationals in an illegal situation accept to return voluntarily to their country of origin or transit. Voluntary return programmes, including the pay-to-go return programmes implemented since the 1970's, have persistently failed to attract a substantive number of participants."

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch Director, comments: "When I was in the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament on 1 April 2014 a Commission official was reporting on its "Returns Policy" report. He told the Committee that the problem was that "most people do not want to voluntary return to the countries they have come from". It was not raised that the fundamental flaw with the EU's returns policy is that that people fleeing from persecution or hunger do not want to go back to the countries they have fled from."

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