By John Gustavsson
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
In its most recent session last month, the European
Parliament passed a widely anticipated “Return Regulation” to facilitate the deportation of illegal
migrants. The legislation’s passage represents a watershed moment for Europe
and carries with it deep implications.
First, though, it’s important to grasp what the bill does
and the extraordinary process through which it was passed.
Today, it is estimated that only 20 percent of migrants ordered to leave the EU
actually do so. As its name implies, the bill aims to make deportations easier
and more efficient. “Return hubs” will be established, and asylum seekers who
cannot be deported to their own countries will instead be sent to deportation
centers outside the EU until they can be returned home. At the same time,
maximum detention times for migrants awaiting deportation will be extended to
24 months, making it significantly harder for failed asylum seekers to “run out
the clock” with endless appeals.
Under the Return Regulation, those who refuse to
voluntarily comply with a deportation order will face penalties and sanctions —
including EU-wide entry bans. Member states will be legally obligated to
respect and recognize deportation orders issued by fellow member states,
preventing failed asylum seekers from moving and reapplying for asylum in a new
EU country.
Getting the law across the finish line constituted
nothing short of a herculean effort. Its passage required a great degree of
political maneuvering — and at the center of it all was Charlie
Weimers, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Sweden.
The European Parliament — the legislative branch of the
European Union — includes members from all 27 member states, who together
represent more than 150 national parties. To prevent the legislative process
from becoming too unwieldy, these parties organize themselves into
ideologically-aligned groups. Currently, the European Parliament is organized
into eight political groups, spanning from The Left to the far-right Europe of
Sovereign Nations (ESN), a group dominated by the Alternative for Germany (AfD)
party.
In the center are the two largest groups: the center-left
Socialists & Democrats (S&D) and the center-right European People’s
Party (EPP). Between them sits the centrist Renew Europe group. Along with the
ESN, the parliament’s right flank is comprised of the European Conservatives
and Reformists (ECR), which includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, and
the Patriots for Europe (PfE or Patriots), home to Marine Le Pen’s National
Rally.
Since the 2024 election, the four right-of-center groups
have held their first-ever overall majority. However, the EPP has preferred to
cut deals with the center and left, continuing a grand coalition with the
S&D and Renew that began in the 1980s.
The grand coalition is rooted in the cordon sanitaire,
a longstanding European political norm of mainstream parties refusing to
cooperate with those perceived to be far-right. Simply put, the parties
entering and enforcing a cordon sanitaire pact agree to do everything in
their power to limit the far-right’s influence. This includes, first and
foremost, not entering any coalitions with far-right parties. In the European
Parliament, the cordon sanitaire applies to the ESN and Patriots groups,
with the ECR tolerated to a degree. It involves denying such “pariah” groups
influential positions like committee chairmanships, vice presidencies, and
other key positions to which they would otherwise be entitled. In practice, the
European Parliament’s cordon sanitaire has meant that, despite the
right-wing holding a majority, virtually all decisions are subject to veto from
the S&D and Renew groups.
Migration has proven to be an especially complicated
issue. Since the refugee crisis of 2015–16, national parliaments throughout
Europe have worked to reduce asylum-based migration, in some cases even
restricting movement within the previously border-free Schengen zone. Member
states realized that without border checkpoints, there was nothing stopping
asylum seekers in southern Europe from traveling to countries that offered more
generous benefits, such as Germany and Sweden. The EU, facing an unprecedented
member-state revolt, granted temporary exemptions from checkpoint-free
movement.
But beyond these exemptions, the EU did not drastically
change course after the refugee crisis — despite the change in mood in European
national capitals. Member states attempting to stem the flow of migrants have
frequently had to fight Brussels over the EU’s human-rights concerns. This disconnect can be traced back to the cordon
sanitaire and the EPP’s unwillingness to work with smaller groups on the
right to pass legislation reforming the EU’s ability to enforce overbroad
human-rights standards on member states.
Enter Charlie Weimers, a Sweden Democrat MEP in the ECR
group, who just might go down in history as the man who broke the cordon
sanitaire. Weimers was appointed by the ECR as its lead negotiator for the
Return Regulation. At first, the EPP was determined to work out a compromise
within the grand coalition, which would have left the ECR and other groups out
in the cold. But negotiations broke down once the left-wing S&D made it
clear that they would not accept return hubs, and that they were also firmly
opposed to both unlimited entry bans and raising the maximum length of
detention.
That was when Weimers and his team sprang into action.
After a hastily organized meeting with the staff of MEPs in the three other
right-wing groups, Weimers’s office set up a WhatsApp group for the staffers to communicate
quickly and transparently with one another — a move that proved to be vital in
building trust. The goal was to unite behind an alternative plan that would
finally provide member states with the necessary tools to deport illegal
aliens. In a rarity for Brussels, the chat enabled things to move quickly:
Drafts were shared, questions asked and answered, technical issues hammered
out, and further meetings planned.
Each group submitted their policy proposals, followed by
in-person negotiations that went past midnight, at which point all groups were
finally satisfied that their key interests were secure. For the groups furthest
to the right, one such key interest was that the text would explicitly allow
member states to be even more ambitious in enforcing their own national
immigration laws than required by the Return Regulation’s requirements; in
other words, that the text would create floors, rather than impose ceilings, on
what member states must do.
Part of the EPP’s eagerness to cut a deal was no doubt
due to the group having appointed French MEP François-Xavier Bellamy as its
lead negotiator. France is just one year away from electing a new president,
and surveys indicate that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party currently holds
a lead. Given this precarious position, it makes sense that Bellamy, whose
party is allied with Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance, is eager to prove to French
voters that he and his party are serious about curtailing migration.
Weimers, together with negotiators from the “pariah”
groups, was able to convince Bellamy that, at least on the issue of migration,
the left-wing groups simply could not be trusted to negotiate in good faith: To
the S&D and Renew, the status quo, which allows deportations to be slowed
down or in many cases outright stopped by EU human-rights statutes, is
perfectly acceptable. What Weimers offered the EPP was not only a final Return
Regulation more closely aligned with their own position — especially compared
to any watered-down version their traditional coalition partners might have
produced — but also something arguably even more valuable: proof that the EPP
was willing to work with the right, giving the group far greater leverage in
future negotiations with the left.
Weimers’s own track record helped seal the deal. He
authored the European Parliament’s first-ever report on EU–Taiwan relations, with even many left-wing MEPs
supporting his push for closer ties with Taiwan. As early as 2022, Weimers’
ferocious campaigning against the Iranian regime earned him a personal sanction by Tehran. Weimers, undeterred, convinced
Parliament to pass his proposal to freeze the assets of Iranian officials who violently
suppressed protests. At the same time, Weimers has burnished his credentials
among immigration hawks by producing a report — followed by a documentary
— exposing EU funding of radical Islamist networks like the Muslim Brotherhood.
Thanks to his cross-party efforts, Weimers is one of the few MEPs to have
earned trust among policymakers both to the left and right of his own group.
This made him the ideal person to bridge divides and finally break through the cordon
sanitaire.
As expected, the passage of the Return Regulation caused
an uproar among the European establishment. German chancellor Friedrich Merz
expressed dismay that MEPs from his party had negotiated with the far right.
Yet, within days of the regulation’s passage, Merz announced a goal to have 800,000 Syrians leave Germany by 2030. One could be
forgiven for suspecting that he may actually be secretly pleased with the turn
of events.
Within Parliament, the four groups to the EPP’s left have
demanded that Weimers be sanctioned
for “verbal violence” after he wrote in a celebratory post that “the era of
deportations has begun.” Given the EPP’s support for Weimers, this feeble
tantrum will go nowhere.
In the end, immigration and deportations remain chiefly
national responsibilities: The EU Return Regulation will only succeed to the
extent that member states choose to wield the new tools it provides. But there
is strong evidence to suggest many EU states will take advantage of the law.
One can only hope that Weimers is right in his assessment that this vote marks
the beginning of an era of deportations — and, with luck, the dawn of an era of
right-wing unity and cooperation that finally consigns the grand coalition to
history.
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