EU return regulation raises fears of crimmigration across Europe

A sweeping new EU regulation on migrant returns is drawing sharp criticism from legal scholars and human rights advocates, who warn it could blur the line between immigration enforcement and criminal law in ways that haven’t been seen before in European policy.

What the regulation actually does

The proposed EU Return Regulation, which is currently advancing through the bloc’s legislative machinery, would significantly expand member states’ ability to detain migrants deemed likely to abscond before deportation. It introduces a new list of objective criteria — 16 in total — that authorities can use to justify detention, including prior criminal convictions, lack of documentation, and previous non-compliance with return orders. Critics say that’s a dangerously broad net. And they’re not wrong to worry. Some of those criteria would capture people who’ve never been charged with any crime.

The ‘crimmigration’ concern

The term crimmigration — the merging of criminal and immigration law — has been circulating in legal academia for over a decade, but scholars at the European Journal of International Law are now arguing that Brussels is institutionalizing it at scale. The regulation would allow detention for up to 18 months in some cases. That’s not an administrative inconvenience. That’s a sentence.

“What we’re seeing is a regulatory architecture that treats irregular migrants not as people in administrative limbo but as potential offenders,” said one senior EU legal affairs analyst familiar with the drafting process. “The presumption of risk is baked in from the start.”

Member states are split

Support for tougher return rules has been building since 2015, but the current draft reflects a political shift that accelerated after the 2024 European Parliament elections pushed the center of gravity rightward. Countries like Italy, Poland, and Denmark have pushed hard for stricter enforcement tools. But others — including Spain and Portugal — have raised procedural objections, particularly around the regulation’s compatibility with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Still, the political momentum appears to favor passage. The European Commission has framed the regulation as a practical fix to a broken system. Only about 20 percent of people ordered to leave the EU actually do so, according to Eurostat data. That gap, the Commission argues, demands a stronger legal toolkit.

What comes next

The regulation is expected to move into trilogue negotiations between the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission later this year. Legal challenges are almost certain to follow, whether through domestic courts or directly at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.

Rights groups including the UNHCR and Amnesty International have already submitted formal objections.

Whether the final text gets softened in negotiations or emerges largely intact will depend on how much political cover centrist MEPs are willing to give to a measure that, on paper at least, tests the outer limits of what EU administrative law is supposed to look like.