European migration policy: green light for deportations and limits on asylum

By a wide majority, MEPs backed policies that facilitate fast-track rejections and offshore centers. The debate comes amid electoral gains by anti-immigration political forces.

On February 10, European Union (EU) lawmakers voted in favor of a measure that allows asylum to be denied and migrants to be deported for arriving from a country on the list of so-called “safe” countries or for having applied for asylum outside the bloc. The migration policy also paves the way for the creation of centers outside the EU to receive applicants for protection.

The vote was 408 in favor and 184 against, although final approval requires the acceptance of the bloc's 27 member governments. This represents a major tightening of EU migration policy since the arrival of more than one million refugees and migrants between 2015 and 2016.

The European Parliament expects the legislation to enter into force in June 2026, and from that date, a person applying for asylum may be deported to a country outside the European bloc, even if that person only passed through it, provided that a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving State.

Greece and the criminalization of solidarity

Among the countries driving these anti-immigration measures is Greece, whose government charged 51-year-old Norwegian teacher Tommy Olsen with alleged membership of an organization engaged in “human smuggling.” Olsen is the founder of the NGO Aegean Boat Report, founded in 2015, which works to help asylum seekers arriving across the Aegean Sea.

Aegean Boat Report stressed that although this situation saddens and angers them, it does not surprise them, since Greece's current administration has sought to silence its work documenting human rights violations against asylum seekers and migrants traveling from Türkiye to the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos.

Tommy Olsen's NGO was founded in 2015 and has since independently monitored and documented sea arrivals, assistance situations and human rights violations. Aegean Boat Report points out that since 2019 the Greek authorities have made systematic use of violent pushbacks against asylum seekers. 

On Wednesday, February 11, the Norwegian police reported that they had received a European arrest warrant issued by Greece against Tommy Olsen. The teacher said that this is a deliberate attack on a human rights defender aimed at intimidating and silencing voices, adding that the NGO has seen these tactics before and insisting that he “did absolutely nothing wrong.” 

For its part, Aegean Boat Report responded that its work “has been publicly supported by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, and by Amnesty International, which in turn expressed concern over the criminalization of the NGO's activists.”

Tommy Olsen insisted that “we do not help people cross from Turkiye to Greece, and we never have. Our work is limited to monitoring, documenting and communicating with the authorities when people in danger or newly arrived are located, so that they can access the asylum procedures guaranteed by international and European law,” he said.

Warnings from international organizations

For her part, Adriana Tidona of Amnesty International linked Olsen's case to one a few months ago, when 24 people were acquitted after seven years of litigation; they could have faced up to 25 years in prison on similar charges. “It is not directly related, but both speak to the same context of hostility toward NGOs and toward those who support migrants and refugees,” Tidona said.
Amnesty International expressed concern about the reform of Greek migration law. Tidona says the Greek administration is not in line with international standards, because smuggling should only be prosecuted if there is evidence of financial gain, and stated that those who act for humanitarian purposes should not be prosecuted. Greece, however, does not include the latter.

The response of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was that border guards “are not a welcoming committee,” because the purpose of their work is to protect Greece's borders, and he stressed that although his government's migration policy is tough, it is also “fair.” Mitsotakis emphasized that everyone who enters the country illegally and has no right to asylum must return.

Like the Greek prime minister's discourse, other European leaders also echo anti-immigration rhetoric. This has been evident since 2015, after more than one million people, most of them from Syria, arrived across the Mediterranean Sea.

This sentiment has deepened with the electoral gains of the far right and popular support for these parties. As a consequence, governments, regardless of whether they are fully in favor, are being pushed to adopt more restrictive migration policies.

Guillermo Whpei

President of Fundación para la Democracia