European right and far-right parties dealt a new blow to asylum rights on February 10 when they voted for legislation allowing EU members to easily deport migrants to “safe third countries” and “safe countries of origin.”
The adoption of changes to the bloc’s migration policy means member states will be able to transfer asylum seekers outside EU borders while applications are processed. The policy eerily resembles plans by far-right governments, specifically Giorgia Meloni’s administration in Italy, to imprison migrants in centers in non-EU countries during the application process.
“To satisfy the racist agendas of conservatives and the far right, and to allow Giorgia Meloni to implement her disgraceful outsourcing agreement with Albania, the EU is applying ‘innovative’ solutions in European migration and asylum policy,” warned MEP Damien Carême. “In other words, if European law does not allow fundamental rights to be violated, then let’s change the law.”
Read more: EU advances new measures restricting right to asylum
The announced changes will also make it possible for EU countries to swiftly remove migrants to countries deemed “safe,” including some with reported human rights infringements. While far-right parties celebrated, The Left – the group that voted fully against the changes in the European Parliament – called the move “another nail in the coffin to the right to asylum on EU soil.”
“From today, the final destruction of the right to asylum is a done deal, sealed by the Holy Alliance between the center and the far right,” said MEP Ilaria Salis. “The line of pushbacks and mass deportation prevails. The line of centers in Albania, in Rwanda, and who knows where else prevails. The racial approach to migration prevails, one already seen in Australia and Israel.”
Networks call out EU legislators’ hypocrisy over ICE
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, migrants’ and human rights networks criticized EU legislators, particularly those from center and center-left groups who condemned the presence of US ICE agents at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy but failed to protect asylum rights when given the opportunity.
The networks warned that ICE and EU migration policies share too much in common to ignore, calling for protection of asylum rights in EU legislation and the disbandment of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. “Just like ICE, Frontex is a part of a post-9/11 genealogy, where migration has been permanently reframed as a security problem,” the network Abolish Frontex wrote. “In Europe too, this moment served as a political catalyst, accelerating a security unification that had previously been hesitant.”
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“The parallels between ICE and Frontex are not speculative,” Abolish Frontex added. “ICE arrests, detains, and deports on American territory. Frontex intercepts at the EU’s external borders, transmits data, participates in checks, coordinates and implements forced returns, and is involved in documented pushbacks.”
“The difference doesn’t lie in the nature of the violence exercised, but in its mode of organization: centralized and assumed in ICE’s case, fragmented and diluted in Frontex’s case.”
Activists and left politicians called for continued mobilizations to protect asylum rights and build solidarity with migrants as the only way to resist growing xenophobic and racist narratives propagated by the right across the region.
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