By Rajiv Menon 
New Delhi, March 27: Europe has quietly been rewriting the rules that govern who gets to stay and who gets sent away, and this week, that rewrite became official. The European Parliament’s passage of the EU Return Regulation on Thursday marks one of the most significant shifts in European Union migration policy in decades, and for India, a country that sends hundreds of thousands of citizens abroad every year, the implications deserve careful reading.
The vote was decisive. With 389 votes in favour, 206 against, and 32 abstentions, the European Parliament agreed to proceed to the next stage of the legislative process for an updated EU common system for the return of third-country nationals staying illegally in the EU. What followed was a debate that exposed fault lines not just within Europe, but across the international community’s understanding of what migration, asylum, and human rights actually mean in 2026.
What the EU Return Regulation Is, and Why It Matters
The regulation is not a single measure. It is a framework, one that touches nearly every aspect of how the European Union handles people who have been told they cannot stay.
The proposed reform introduces new obligations for third-country nationals to cooperate with return authorities, allows for the detention of people for up to 24 months or more under certain conditions, envisages strengthened mutual recognition of return decisions across the EU, and provides for a possibility to use return hubs in countries outside the EU.
That last element, the “return hub,” is the provision that has attracted the most scrutiny globally. The law enables EU countries to return irregular migrants to third countries unrelated to their origin, as long as they have bilateral agreements in place with a non-EU state to build centres called “return hubs” in its territory. A rejected asylum seeker who entered Europe from one country could therefore be transferred to a detention facility in a completely different country, potentially one they have never visited, while final deportation proceedings are completed.
At the moment, people staying irregularly in the EU are usually allowed to remain on its territory until they are deported. However, under this new law, people would be forcibly removed to facilities in non-EU countries whilst awaiting their final deportation.
The law also significantly expands the consequences for non-cooperation. Those who refuse to comply with a return order, or are deemed a flight risk, can be detained for up to 24 months. Automatic EU-wide entry bans follow for those who do not leave voluntarily within the prescribed window. The law will also increase the legal detention period to up to two years and impose practically unlimited entry bans in the EU on the returned people.
The Political Shift Behind the Vote
To understand why this regulation passed, it is necessary to understand how European parliamentary politics has shifted over the past two years.
The European People’s Party (EPP), mainstream conservatives, aligned with far-right groups to get it over the finish line, despite earlier backlash over their cooperation in drafting the bill at the committee level. The EPP’s partners in this coalition included parties such as Alternative for Germany (AfD), France’s National Rally, and Hungary’s Fidesz, groups that until recently were treated as outside the acceptable boundaries of governing coalitions in the European Parliament.
The outcome was driven by the EPP, which chose to align with far-right political groups to secure a majority, and in doing so, has not only weakened core safeguards and principles, it has also actively contributed to legitimising far-right narratives and policy approaches in the European Parliament.
The coalition was not entirely clean, and the divisions it exposed cut across expected lines. Danish, Maltese, and Latvian lawmakers from the centre-left Socialists and Democrats voted in favour of the law, in line with their governments’ migration policies, as did Nordic and German MEPs from the Renew Europe group. Migration, in other words, has ceased to be a reliable left-right issue even within European parliaments.
The right celebrated openly. Nicola Procaccini, co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists, said the regulation will enable a more effective, and indeed stricter, system in terms of returns, procedures, and preventing entry, and insisted the Meloni government’s line had become the European line. The reference was to Italy’s bilateral detention arrangement with Albania, which provided the political template that the EU-wide regulation now formalises at scale.
India in the Frame: The Safe Country Designation
For Indian readers, one development within Europe’s broader migration architecture deserves particular attention, one that preceded Thursday’s vote but is directly connected to it.
Based on an earlier agreement, the following countries have been designated as safe countries of origin at EU level: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia. This designation, which takes effect alongside the Asylum Procedure Regulation on June 12, 2026, means that asylum applications from Indian nationals in EU member states will automatically be processed through an accelerated procedure. In practice, claims will be decided in weeks rather than months, and the presumption of safety will work against the applicant from the start.
Rights advocates have pushed back firmly on this. Italian lawmaker Cecilia Strada, who voted against the designations, said the so-called “safe countries of origin” are not safe, and that parliament had passed resolutions on many of these countries, condemning deteriorations in their rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights.
The Indian government has not formally responded to the designation. That is not unusual, as the listing creates no immediate diplomatic obligations, and India’s own strategic relationship with the EU is at a pivotal moment. Still, the classification carries practical weight for Indian nationals seeking protection in Europe, particularly those from states or communities facing localised violence or discrimination that falls outside the standard templates for refugee recognition.
The India-EU Mobility Pact: A Complicating Factor
The migration crackdown sits in uncomfortable proximity to a separate, far more positive development in EU-India relations. In January 2026, India and the European Union used the Delhi summit on January 27, 2026, to move people not just goods more freely across their borders, with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic signing a “Comprehensive Framework for Cooperation on Mobility,” the first bloc-level agreement of its kind that India has concluded with any partner.
The pact creates a legal template that will allow EU member states to issue short-term study, research and seasonal-work permits to Indian nationals for up to 12 months under fast-tracked procedures, and establishes an EU Legal Gateway Office in New Delhi as a one-stop information hub.
Alongside the trade pact sits a separate migration deal, wrapped into what Brussels calls a broader strategic partnership with India. EU officials insist the arrangement is sensible and necessary: attract skilled workers while improving cooperation on illegal migration and returns.
That last phrase matters. The mobility pact explicitly commits India to cooperate on the return of irregular migrants, an issue that had previously complicated EU-India talks. The Return Regulation, now moving toward implementation, creates the legal architecture within which those returns would actually happen. In short, both instruments are moving simultaneously, one opening legal channels for Indian professionals and students, the other building a more aggressive system to remove those without legal status.
The Commission says expanded legal routes will be balanced by tougher cooperation on returns. Yet Europe’s recent record inspires little confidence, as enforcing returns has long been one of the weakest points of EU migration policy.
Rights Groups and the Legal Challenge Ahead
The international human rights community has responded to Thursday’s vote with coordinated criticism that goes beyond the usual NGO statements.
Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said the vote marked a growing trend towards increasingly harmful, exclusionary, and draconian policies on migration, with worrying repercussions for due process and evidence-based policymaking, and warned that far from reducing irregularity, these proposals risk trapping more people in precarious situations.
The Migration Policy Group warned that the regulation risks making gaps in safeguards even wider, and that the Parliament had endorsed an approach that risks undermining the EU’s core values by expanding detention, including the risk of detaining children, and introducing return hubs outside the EU.
Sixteen United Nations special rapporteurs had issued warnings before the vote was held. It is particularly alarming that these warnings have been effectively disregarded, according to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, which described the outcome as a clear regression from fundamental rights standards that risks undermining core principles of EU law.
The legal challenges will come. Rights groups have already signalled intent to challenge the regulation’s compatibility with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Geneva Conventions. These new rules do not only undermine the EU’s core values, but potentially a raft of EU and international laws, including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Geneva Conventions. The European Court of Justice is the likely venue. How it rules will determine whether the return hubs ever actually become operational, or whether they follow the same legal trajectory as the United Kingdom’s now-abandoned Rwanda deportation scheme.
What Comes Next: Trilogue and the 2028 Timeline
Thursday’s vote was not the final word. It was the opening of the next phase.
The final version of the law will now be discussed between the Parliament and EU member states. The negotiation is expected to be smooth, as there are no substantial differences between the two texts.
If the negotiation proceeds on schedule, the regulation will be implemented in 2028. That two-year window is not insignificant. Several EU member state elections are scheduled between now and 2028, and the political configuration that produced this regulation could shift. Governments that enter office in that period will have real authority over how the regulation is interpreted, enforced, and applied.
For India specifically, the next milestone to watch is the implementation of the safe country of origin list on June 12, 2026. That is when Indian nationals seeking asylum in the EU will begin experiencing the accelerated processing timelines in practice. Whether the Indian government chooses to engage diplomatically on this designation, or treat it as a background condition to be managed through the mobility pact framework, will define New Delhi’s posture toward European migration politics for the foreseeable future.
The Bigger Picture
The EU Return Regulation does not exist in isolation. It is part of a broader realignment happening simultaneously in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across much of the Global North, where governments are competing to demonstrate stricter migration enforcement while simultaneously negotiating skill and labour agreements with countries like India that they need for demographic and economic reasons.
The Return Regulation is a decisive acceleration in a long-running direction: detection operations inside EU territory, expanded detention including for children, forced deportation across a wide range of cases, cooperation penalties, return hubs in third countries that people may not have a connection with, and entry bans stretching to 10 years or more.
For India, a country whose diaspora contributes enormously to its foreign exchange, whose students and professionals depend on European institutions and employers, and whose government has carefully built a strategic partnership with Brussels, the question is not simply what this law does to migrants in Europe. The question is what kind of Europe India is building a long-term relationship with, and whether the rights frameworks that once anchored that relationship will still be standing when the return hubs open for business.
Stay ahead with Hindustan Herald — bringing you trusted news, sharp analysis, and stories that matter across Politics, Business, Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyle, and more.
Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, YouTube, and join our Telegram community @hindustanherald for real-time updates.
Specializes in South Asian geopolitics and global diplomacy, bringing in-depth analysis on international relations.
- Rajiv Menon
- Rajiv Menon
- Rajiv Menon
- Rajiv Menon
Arun Upadhayay