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The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
The vote effectively underwrites Italy’s deal with Albania and the Dutch government’s agreement with Uganda on the deportation of people whose asylum claims in the Netherlands have been turned down.
In a separate vote, MEPs also voted to create an EU list of “safe third countries”, meaning that people from those places will face fast-tracked procedures and may find it harder to claim asylum.
The list includes all EU candidate countries, including Georgia and Turkey, where the EU has expressed concerns about government crackdowns on the opposition in 2025. The safe list also includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia.
Rights groups have raised the alarm about the inclusion of Tunisia, where President Kaïs Saïed has cracked down on civil society and opposition figures have been jailed for up to 66 years by politically controlled courts. Tunisian forces have also forced back migrants to remote desert regions, where some have died of thirst.
A coalition of 39 NGOs said in a statement before Tuesday’s vote that designating Tunisia as a safe country of origin deprived “Tunisian nationals of their right to an individual, fair, and effective assessment of their asylum claims, while giving the Tunisian authorities a renewed carte blanche to continue their systematic violations against migrants, civil society and the wider civic space”.
Alessandro Ciriani, an Italian MEP, who led the European parliament’s work on the safe countries of origin list, hailed the result: “This is the beginning of a new phase: migration is no longer endured but governed.”
He said: “For too long, political decisions in migration policy have been systematically called into question by divergent judicial interpretations, paralysing state action and fuelling administrative chaos.”
Ciriani is member of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has clashed with Italian and European judges, who have ruled against the government’s arrangements with Albania.
In 2024 an Italian court ruled that seven men at the Albanian facility would be transferred to Italy, disagreeing with the safe country of origin argument presented by Italy.
Italy had argued that the men could be transferred to their “safe” home countries of Bangladesh and Egypt, but the judges said there was a lack of transparency in how safety was assessed.
The EU has been tightening refugee rules since more than 1.3 million people claimed asylum during the 2015 migration crisis, but the trend has accelerated with electoral gains by nationalist and far-right parties.
In the search for “innovative solutions”, EU leaders in 2024 endorsed the concept of offshore return hubs – processing centres for people denied asylum in the EU.
The rightwing Dutch government announced last September it had reached a deal with Uganda to enable the deportation of Africans denied asylum in the Netherlands. Denmark’s Social Democrat government had previously explored processing asylum claimants in Rwanda, but never went ahead.
Last year 155,100 people risked their lives travelling in unseaworthy boats across the Mediterranean, while 1,953 died or went missing, according to the UN refugee agency.
The deadly toll has continued in the first weeks of 2026. As many as 380 people were feared drowned after a boat from Tunisia sailed into a cyclone last month.
Supporters of the new measures argue they undermine the business model of people smugglers.
“People who genuinely need protection must receive it, but not necessarily in the European Union. Effective protection can also be provided in a safe third country, while individual assessment remains fully guaranteed,” said Assita Kanko, a Flemish nationalist politician.
The International Rescue Committee described the votes as deeply disappointing.
“The new ‘safe third country’ rules are likely to force people to countries they may never have set foot in – places where they have no community, do not speak the language and face a very real risk of abuse and exploitation,” said the IRC’s senior advocacy adviser, Meron Ameha Knikman.
The two laws were passed with strong support from the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) and three nationalist and far-right groups.
The votes were the latest sign of a new dynamic in the European parliament after the election of a record number of nationalist and far-right MEPs to the right of the traditional Christian Democrats in 2024.
While critics accused the EPP of breaking the cordon sanitaire, voting lists revealed a more complex picture. The centre-left was deeply divided, with significant minorities of socialist and centrist MEPs voting in favour of the new laws, while many centrists abstained.
