EU home affairs ministers agreed on Monday tough EU rules for the return of third-country nationals staying illegally in EU countries, which will also have to be approved by the European parliament.

Ministers also agreed a deal on a solidarity mechanism among EU member states, as part of a pact on asylum and migration that is due to become effective on 12 June 2026.  The new rules create an EU-wide procedure for the return of people staying illegally in EU member states.

The text specifies that the “country of return” could be one “with which there is an agreement or arrangement on the basis of which the person who has no right to stay in the member states is accepted.”

Such an agreement would have to be negotiated with countries “where international human rights standards and principles of international law… are respected.”

This opens the way to deportations to locations that are not the person’s country of origin. Member states would also be able to establish return hubs outside the EU.

People ordered to leave by an EU member state will have to cooperate with authorities, or face a deduction of benefits, the withdrawal of work permits or even prison. Special measures would apply to people posing a security risk, including longer-than-usual detention and an “indefinite” ban.

European return order

Under the new regulation, EU countries will also mutually recognise return decisions so that a member state would be able to execute a return order issued by another.

A European return order will be set up, and national authorities will be in charge of inserting it into the Schengen information system, the EU information-sharing platform for border management, to make it accessible to other EU countries.

“Three in four irregular migrants who have been issued a return decision in the EU continue to stay here instead of returning home,” said Rasmus Stoklund, immigration minister for Denmark, which holds the rotating EU council presidency. “I believe the new set of rules significantly can help improve these numbers.”

The final text of the regulation now has to be negotiated with the European Parliament.

Solidarity mechanism

As part of the “solidarity pool”, EU countries will support other member states “that are under migratory pressure” with relocations, financial contributions and “alternative measures”.

Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain will be the beneficiaries. Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia and Poland will be able to request a full or partial deduction from their contributions due to the “cumulative migratory pressure of the previous years”.

Dutch reaction

Dutch migration minister David Van Weel welcomed the decisions. “It was very important to us … that those border nations that are on the edge of Europe have a responsibility to make sure that they have better border controls,” he said.

The minister said that the Netherlands will contribute €22 million in financial support, but not with physical relocations. According to Dutch media, the Netherlands would have to accept 1,095 refugees from southern member states.

“Unprecedented stripping of rights”

Last week campaign groups, including the Dutch Council for Refugees, urged EU legislators to “take a more rights-based approach”, saying the text under discussion “represents a severe and unprecedented deterioration of safeguards, legal protections, and fundamental rights standards.”

Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU advocate on migration at Amnesty International, said these “punitive measures amount to an unprecedented stripping of rights based on migration status and will leave more people in precarious situations and legal limbo.”

“In addition, EU member states continue to push for cruel and unworkable ‘return hubs’, or offshore deportation centres outside of the EU, forcibly transferring people to countries where they have no connection and may be detained for long periods, violating protections in international law,” she said. The group called on the European Parliament to “reverse this approach”.