11 February 2025
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Earlier this month, EUobserver reported that the European Commission has adopted “a new rhetoric”.
It targets “irregular migrants” and “failed asylum seekers,” and pushes “a political priority to increase return rates of people ordered to leave the EU.”
This is, in fact, historic rhetoric. We are being served old wine from old bottles. Perhaps the only thing new is the glasses in which it is being served.
In any case, the renewed prominence of this discourse is leading to new policy initiatives.
These initiatives require the EU to assert greater power over non-EU states, to encourage cooperation in the migration control agenda – an agenda that will lead to the continued abuse and dehumanisation of migrants and refugees.
“Leverage” over non-EU states
For years, the EU has been looking for ways to increase “leverage” against non-EU states, to try to get them to accept deportations.
This has included visa sanctions, and proposals to introduce trade sanctions against states that refuse to accept deportation flights.
Sound familiar?
Almost immediately after the return to power of Donald Trump, the US administration proposed massive sanctions against imports from Colombia, to try to force the country to accept deportation flights from the US.
It worked.
Blanket secrecy
Many of Trump’s admirers in European governments are likely wishing they had the power to do the same, and with such ease. In the EU there is at least some semblance of democratic procedure around these issues.
Up to a point, anyway.
MOCADEM is the entity in which EU governments work to coordinate border externalisation policies. As Statewatch reported in January, the Polish Council presidency has proposed various ways to improve its working methods.
Parliamentary scrutiny was not amongst the potential improvements. There is currently no such scrutiny.
We hope that the MOCADEM documents published with this bulletin will aid in the struggle for, at a bare minimum, basic transparency of MOCADEM’s work.
Border control: inside-out, outside-in
Elsewhere in Brussels, member state officials have been discussing their hopes and dreams for the EU’s forthcoming new law on deportations.
A discussion paper from the Polish presidency raised a crucial point: increasing deportations requires the cooperation of non-EU states.
That is to say: “internal” policies have profound “external” dependencies and effects.
Other documents published with this bulletin highlight the same issue.
For example, the Polish presidency has suggested deploying migration liaison officers as far afield as Türkiye and the UAE, in the name of countering the “instrumentalisation” of migration.
The aim would be to prevent certain people travelling to Russia and Belarus.
Meanwhile, plans for deportation camps in non-EU states (referred to in the EU’s sanitised jargon as “return hubs”), are ongoing.
Perhaps it is stating the obvious, but the externalisation of border and immigration controls is inseparable from the policy initiatives launched within the EU, or at its external borders.
Frontex outside the EU
Politicians and officials know this, of course. That is why Frontex has been slowly increasing its operations, contacts and initiatives in states from Morocco to Moldova.
The agency’s annual report on cooperation with so-called “third countries” is examined in this bulletin.
It shows an ongoing encroachment on and involvement with the activities of non-EU states. That process will have increased further in the period after that covered by the report (2023).
We are also happy to provide, for the first time, updates on jurisprudence relevant to the externalisation of border controls. These are provided by members of the Refugee Law Initiative Working Group on Externalisation.
Trump’s return to power has given a boost to his admirers and allies all around the world. Europe is no exception. They will seek to advance the initiatives examined in this bulletin, alongside many others. The question remains: how to stop them?
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