Political tension around EU return law: VVD’er Azmani right overtaken

Earlier this evening, the European Parliament in Strasbourg will vote on a new European return law that should make it easier to defy rejected asylum seekers. A politically important part of the proposal are so-called ‘return hubs’, deployment centers outside the EU with which member states can make agreements for the reception of people who have been processed.

In the run-up to the vote, political tension has risen considerably. Reason: the law will most likely come through parliament with the support of Christian Democrats, right-wing conservatives and radical and far-right parties. Social Democrats, the liberal group (with VVD and D66 for the Netherlands) and the Greens will not support the proposal, it is expected.

Dutch VVD mer Malik Azmani is responsible for the negotiations on the law on behalf of parliament. In recent months, he has tried to compromise between the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Liberals.

“This is such sensitive legislation,” Azmani previously told the NOS. “Middle parties will have to take their responsibility, because the flanks probably won’t support it.”

Strategy failed

But that strategy seems to fail. The Social Democrats now find Azmani’s compromise proposals too strict and want to negotiate for longer. The Christian Democrats believe that there is no more time to lose and have now put their own, stricter proposal on the table that leaked last week.

That alternative plan receives support from right-wing conservative and radical and far-right groups in the European Parliament, including the Patriots for Europe, of which the PVV is also a part. Together, these parties have a majority.

The proposal of the Christian Democrats goes further than that of Azmani in several respects. This would make it possible to also send families with children to the ‘return hubs’. In Azmani’s plan, this was excluded.

In addition, the hubs in Azmani’s compromise proposal are intended as the very last option, if return does not work in other ways. In the plan of the Christian Democrats, asylum seekers who have been processed can be sent directly to such locations outside the EU.

The Christian Democratic EPP faction has a strong negotiating position. She can form a majority with both the centre parties and ‘over the right’. Previously, cooperation with the radical and extreme right was still taboo, but now there is more cooperation.

In the previous European elections, the far-right parties won heavily. Commission President Von der Leyen, herself a Christian Democrat, said after the campaign that she only wanted to cooperate with parties that were pro-European, pro-Ukraine and pro-rule of law. But principles have given way to pragmatism.

Azmani passed right

Negotiator Azmani does not want to comment on the vote tonight. Last week he said in a statement: “We have a compromise that I think is a balanced outcome of our talks.” Now that it looks like his compromise proposal does not make it, the question arises whether he can maintain his position as the main negotiator of Parliament.

MEP Tineke Strik (GroenLinks-PvdA), also a professor of migration law, calls it “very exceptional” that a negotiator from the liberal faction can be passed by the Christian Democrats in this way. “I can’t remember something like this happening before,” says Strik, who has been in the European Parliament since 2019.

European Migration Pact

The new return law should be the final piece of the European Migration Pact, the stricter European asylum policy that will take effect in June. At present, there are still return rules from 2008.

Numerous NGOs are critical of the increasingly strict European asylum and migration policy and call on the EU to stop the strict return law. They see nothing at all in the ‘return hubs’, which they say amount to prisons for people who have been processed.

Last week, a review of the return policy of eleven European countries, including the Netherlands, was published. The researchers write that there is a “structurally unbalanced landscape, in which coercive measures are often given priority over the protection of rights, dignity and legitimacy”.

In the meantime, the Netherlands wants to speed up with the new system. After his first visit to Brussels, asylum minister Van den Brink announced that the Netherlands, together with four other countries, wants to take the lead in returning asylum seekers who have been processed out of the process to the hubs.

After an agreement in the European Parliament, negotiations follow with the EU countries on the new return law. The hope is that those talks will be completed quickly and that the law can enter into effect approximately in the same way as the other new EU rules of the asylum and migration pact.