Declassified documents reveal that, prior to the crossing of over 70,000 people from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in July, Spain’s intelligence services had passed a warning to Rabat. Still, Morocco let it happen, demonstrating once again that border externalisation exposes Europe to the whims of autocrats and leads to needless death and suffering. What can Spain and the EU learn from Ceuta?

Between the morning of 30 July and the evening of 31 July 2026, more than 70,000 people crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish city of 80,000 inhabitants on the North African coast, bordering Morocco. It was the largest single breach of the European Union’s external border on record.

At 1:52 pm on 29 July, an officer of Spain’s National Intelligence Centre in Ceuta informed the office of the government’s delegate in the city that calls were circulating online for a crossing “by fence and by sea” the following evening, on Morocco’s Throne Day. Facebook groups behind the call had around 180,000 members between them. That same day, the intelligence service alerted Morocco’s two intelligence agencies, the DGST and the DGED, and asked for their cooperation in stopping the plan.

We know all this thanks to 40 internal documents that the Spanish government later released, under pressure from both parliament and the courts. Yet the following morning, gendarmes on the beaches near Fnideq stood aside as tens of thousands of people – overwhelmingly young Moroccans – walked into the sea. At least 141 died, most of them in the sea off the Tarajal breakwater.

Within 72 hours, roughly 90 per cent of those who survived were back in Morocco. Most of them returned voluntarily, in cooperation with Rabat. Several thousand remained, among them more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors, who under Spanish law cannot be returned without a verified family placement, and applicants for asylum, whose removal is suspended until their claim has been assessed. Rabat has demanded that the minors be handed over.

Whether Moroccan authorities directed the crossing rather than merely failing to stop it remains contested. Pedro Sánchez told parliament on 3 September that during “the 10 central hours” of 30 July the Moroccan gendarmerie “permitted the crossing”, while maintaining that no proof had been offered that Morocco designed or executed the operation. But that is not the question that matters most. A state that polices its northern coast as tightly as Morocco does, and that two weeks later swiftly blocked a new online call to cross into Ceuta, does not just lose control for 10 hours by chance.

By design or by omission, the Moroccan state is responsible for the 141 people who died in the water. But other choices, too, made this tragedy possible.

A European failure

Two policy failures converged in Ceuta – one European, one Spanish.

The European policy in question is border externalisation. Since the agreement with Turkey in 2016, the EU has paid third countries to hold people back from its borders and has treated what happens to those people as a matter for the jurisdiction concerned. Libya in 2017, Morocco in 2019, Tunisia in 2023, Mauritania and Egypt in 2024; and now the Pact on Migration and Asylum, which extends the model rather than questioning it. Morocco receives more European border funding than any other state in North Africa.

Progressive forces have opposed this arrangement on humanitarian grounds for a decade. The countries the EU designates as safe are not safe for the people held in them, as the documented record of torture, rape, and abandonment in the desert makes plain. Moreover, defending the right to seek a life elsewhere means refusing to see people turned into a commodity exchanged between governments.

But Ceuta also exposes a second flaw in the model, one that governments indifferent to the first may find harder to ignore. Every externalisation agreement transfers to a third state a measure of control over the foreign policy of the state that pays. Turkey demonstrated this at the Greek border in 2020. Belarus demonstrated it against Poland and Lithuania in 2021. Morocco has now demonstrated it twice in five years, the second time on a scale seven or eight times larger than the first.

The EU believed it had purchased control over its external borders. What it has actually acquired is a set of dependencies, one per neighbour, each exercisable at that neighbour’s convenience.

Spain’s responsibilities

Spain, for its part, has pursued appeasement, attempting to secure a difficult neighbour’s goodwill through unilateral concession.

Morocco has used the border with Ceuta and Melilla as an instrument of pressure for decades. In 2002, it occupied Perejil, an uninhabited island close to the Moroccan coast but under Spanish sovereignty. In 2018, on the eve of Throne Day, it let several hundred people storm the Ceuta fence. In May 2021, after the leader of the Polisario Front – a Sahrawi nationalist liberation movement that fights for the independence of Western Sahara from Moroccan control – was admitted to a hospital in Spain under a false identity, some 10,000 people entered Ceuta in under three days while Moroccan police looked on.

Spain did not respond by reducing its exposure. Instead, in March 2022, Sánchez sent an official letter to King Mohammed VI endorsing Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara, reversing half a century of Spanish neutrality over the decolonisation of its former colony and doing so without a parliamentary debate and without consulting the coalition partner then in government. In June that year, at least 23 migrants and asylum seekers died in a crowd crush at the fence in Melilla – Spain’s other city on the North African coast – on the Moroccan side of the border, as Moroccan and Spanish security forces moved to repel a mass crossing.

Four years on, the customs posts at Ceuta and Melilla still do not operate normally, and Spain and Morocco have not resolved their airspace dispute. That concession taught Rabat that pressure at the border produces results.

In August this year, Morocco’s justice minister, a royal appointee, went on state television to claim Rabat’s “historic and geographic right” over Ceuta and Melilla, demanding a bilateral commission on their “return to the homeland”. In September, responding to the documents declassified by the Spanish government, Morocco’s foreign minister, Nasser Bourita, issued a statement accusing Spanish politicians and media of “strategic blindness”, warning that this would produce “recurring tensions”, and reminding Madrid that “geographic proximity is an immutable fact”. The two cities have since featured in Morocco’s parliamentary election campaign.

Yet until the hours preceding this summer’s crisis, the Spanish state still trusted Morocco to act on its warnings that a crossing was being organised. Madrid’s posture was to fully rely on the goodwill of a neighbour that had already used the border against it, five years earlier, to extract the largest foreign policy concession in decades – and to double down on a policy that had already caused unnecessary deaths.

A government that builds its regional policy on keeping a neighbour appeased loses the capacity to criticise that neighbour’s actions. 

Responsibility for this failure lies with Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE). Sumar, the junior coalition partner of which I am a member, has warned for years that the relationship built since 2022 would produce a tragedy like this summer’s. After 30 July, it has repeated in parliament that Spain suffered an attack in which people in extreme vulnerability were used as the instrument, that the explanation attributing the crossing to smuggling networks is not credible, and that the response was belated and inadequate. It has done so not with the intention to bring down the government, but to change the policy.

The reticence of the Socialist side is structural rather than personal. To name Morocco’s responsibility is to concede that the 2022 concession bought nothing. A government that builds its regional policy on keeping a neighbour appeased loses the capacity to criticise that neighbour’s actions. Five weeks passed before Sánchez addressed parliament. The summoning of the Moroccan embassy’s representative on 21 August was kept secret for two weeks, while similar episodes in disputes with Israel, Italy, and Argentina were widely publicised. The prime minister’s most recent formulation is that he “exculpates no one” and will act “with the utmost firmness” if solid proof emerges. Morocco, for its part, has informed Madrid that it is conducting its own investigation. It has not said who is conducting it or when it will report back.

Why Europe did not help

Madrid’s reticence explains why no case for European solidarity was made, but does not justify how the EU and some of its member states reacted.

On 31 July, Italy’s right-wing government threatened to suspend Schengen with Spain and blamed the deaths on Spain’s extraordinary regularisation of undocumented migrants, a process opened in January which had drawn more than 800,000 applications by July. No emergency Council was called. The Treaty’s solidarity clause was not invoked. A member state had suffered a breach of its external border on a scale never seen before, and the response from the other capitals was silence.

The reasons are not hard to find. Spain recognised the state of Palestine in 2024, has been the most outspoken European voice on Gaza, has declined to make its bases fully available for offensive operations in the US war on Iran, and has decided to regularise migrants rather than deporting them. For many European powers and for the US, these count as serious transgressions.

In the months before the crossing, several of Spain’s allies moved closer to Rabat. On 15 July, two weeks before the mass crossing, the US House of Representatives passed the State Department funding bill for 2027. The report the Appropriations Committee had published in April to accompany it described Ceuta and Melilla as “administered by Spain” but “located in Moroccan territory”, remaining “the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim”. It also endorsed State Department efforts to facilitate dialogue on their future status. The report carries no legal force, and its sponsor has since described the wording as purely geographical. Still, it was the first time the US Congress put the Moroccan claim in writing.

Moreover, on 7 August, hours after taking office, Colombia’s new president, pro-Trump right-winger Abelardo de la Espriella, recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in the presence of Morocco’s foreign minister, and three days later recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which international law considers part of Syria. Morocco is Israel’s closest military partner in North Africa. No coordination needs to be alleged for these facts to matter: aligned interests move in the same direction without a masterplan.

The Spanish Right has managed to play both sides. The right-wing Partido Popular (PP) and the far-right Vox spent the first days of the crisis in studied ambiguity, then rounded on Rabat, accusing Morocco of organising the crossing and Sánchez of covering for it. At the same time, they demanded the immediate return of the people who crossed, and said nothing about the US report on the “future status” of the two exclaves.

Severity towards those in the water, deference towards the governments backing the state that put them there: that combination is not a Spanish peculiarity, and progressives elsewhere in Europe will recognise it in their own opposition.

Another way forward

Spain, and the EU with it, built a border policy on the assumption that a neighbouring autocracy would act in their interest, and that assumption has now failed at a cost of 141 lives. What replaces that policy must start from a different premise.

The first needed change concerns the bilateral relationship. Every Spanish government has accepted that Morocco’s capacity to cause harm makes a working relationship necessary, and that is a reasonable starting point. But there is a difference between maintaining a relationship and organising an entire regional policy around keeping the neighbour placated. A relationship with Rabat that can survive Ceuta must rest on reciprocity that can be verified and consequences that can be enforced: accountability for 30 July before ministerial contacts resume at their previous level, auditable conditions on border cooperation, and diversification of Spain’s regional ties so that no single neighbour holds a veto.

There have been steps in the right direction: Sánchez visited Algiers in July to mend a diplomatic rift around Western Sahara, and on 10 September, the Spanish parliament approved a law extending nationality to Sahrawis born in the territory before August 1977, when the option to claim Spanish nationality granted at the end of colonial rule expired. However positive, these steps are not yet a policy.

The second necessary change is European. When Belarus pushed people towards the Polish and Lithuanian borders in 2021, the EU called it a hybrid attack, imposed sanctions on Minsk, and adjusted its legal framework accordingly. Applying the same standard to Morocco is the minimum. Beyond that, every externalisation agreement in force should be reopened to attach conditions and consequences, because funding without them amounts to a retainer rather than cooperation.

More fundamentally, the EU should reconsider its outsourcing model. That means offering safe routes that people can use without crossing a sea or a fence: work and family-reunification visas issued in countries of origin at a scale that corresponds to actual demand rather than to political tolerance; the possibility of applying for protection at European consulates and through humanitarian corridors, so that the right to asylum does not depend on surviving the journey; and mobility agreements negotiated with the countries migrants come from, as partners with interests of their own, rather than with the transit states through which they are pushed.

A shared European system of reception and relocation that does not leave the state where people first arrive to manage the consequences alone is also needed, alongside asylum procedures that take weeks rather than years, and the regularisation of those already present, because an undocumented population is the raw material of every form of exploitation. None of this is quick or cheap, but it removes the dependency at the root: a route that does not run through Morocco is a route Morocco cannot open or close.

The people who crossed into Ceuta on 30 July have rights that do not depend on why they crossed, and a border policy that does not begin from that fact ends by rewarding the state that used them.

The third change concerns the people at the fence. Treating the migrants as the threat shifts the responsibility away from the actors who sent them. The far right across Europe supplies that narrative, in Spain with demands for immediate pushbacks, and elsewhere with the argument that people used as a weapon may be handled as one. The two interests converge at the fence, and each relies on the other to keep the argument there. Refusing that argument is the only coherent answer. The people who crossed into Ceuta on 30 July have rights that do not depend on why they crossed, and a border policy that does not begin from that fact ends by rewarding the state that used them.

These three changes are not in tension. Defending the people who cross borders and defending the borders’ integrity are the same task. Any policy that does not recognise this is a recipe for more tragedies and blackmail by autocratic powers.

In just a few years, support for “remigration” – an illegal project to deport migrants, refugees and citizens who are deemed “unassimilated” – has moved from the fringes to the fore of political discourse. In Italy, this dynamic has been enabled by collaboration between the far right in government and extra-parliamentary groups. How to resist the normalisation of extremist ideas when the debate keeps shifting further to the right?

Around 500 far-right politicians, activists, and influencers gathered in Porto last May for the second edition of the “Remigration Summit”. The first had been held a year earlier in Gallarate, not far from Milan. In April this year, Milan also hosted the demonstration “Fearless! In Europe, we are masters in our own home”, organised by the European far-right party Patriots for Europe. In June, a pro-remigration march took place in Rome, reportedly attended by around 4000 people. Two weeks later, on 30 June, the “Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista” (“Remigration and Reconquest Committee”) filed a citizen initiative bill on remigration, collecting over 130,000 signatures (well above the 50,000 required).  

All of these initiatives reflect the growing popularity of “remigration”, which, according to the summit’s promoters, aims to “prevent population replacement through the reversal of migratory flows, thereby restoring the sovereignty, independence, and identity of countries, through the defense of their ethnocultural specificity.” In practice, remigration means the mass expulsion of irregular migrants, but also asylum seekers, refugees, and other legal migrants and citizens deemed “unassimilated” into the dominant culture – that is, people who are non-white and Muslim.  

From the fringes to the institutions 

The Remigration and Reconquest Committee brings together various strands of the extra-parliamentary, anti-democratic, and neo-fascist far right, including CasaPound (whose members have proudly called themselves “the fascists of the third millennium”), Veneto Fronte Skinheads, Brescia ai bresciani, and the Rete dei patrioti. But remigration has also been popularised by prominent figures within the institutional Right, particularly the League.  

Led by Transport Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the League is the second-largest force in the three-party governing coalition. It remains a key player in regional politics in Northern Italy, but has in recent years lost many of its supporters to Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. In an attempt to stem its losses, the League has increasingly radicalised on identity issues.  

So far, this strategy hasn’t worked. In February, Roberto Vannacci – an army general elected to the European Parliament with the League in 2024 – left the League to found a new party, Futuro Nazionale (“National Future”). Vannacci, who has been criticised for his homophobic, racist, and fascism-revisionist statements, is among the staunchest supporters of remigration, and accuses the government and the League of being too moderate and too willing to compromise. National Future is currently polling above 7 per cent, ahead of the League and just behind Forza Italia, the junior coalition partner.  

Although remigration remains, for now, a minority project, its political rise has already created a climate of tension. In January, for example, during a press event at the Chamber of Deputies for the launch of the popular-initiative bill on remigration, a member of Rete dei patrioti handed a fake plane ticket to journalist Youssef Hassan Holgado, who is of Spanish and Egyptian origin. “I was there as a journalist and was given a ticket to ‘remigrate’ to my country of origin,” recounts Hassan Holgado. “As a journalist, I have the rhetorical tools to defend myself against accusations and attacks. But that gesture is an insult to all the people of foreign origin who might not have the tools to defend themselves against this barbarity.”  

The press conference, organised by League MP Domenico Furgiuele, was later cancelled after dozens of opposition lawmakers occupied the chamber, singing the anti-fascist anthem “Bella ciao” and holding up copies of the Italian constitution. In April, the 32 MPs who had taken part in the protest were suspended for blocking the event. In June, Furgiuele left the League to join National Future.  

Both in Italy and Germany, […] provisions stipulate that no one may be stripped of their citizenship on political grounds. Born from the resolve never to repeat Nazi and fascist persecutions, these principles are now being challenged across Europe.

Racism and conspiracy theories 

Italy, with two far-right parties in government, represents an important laboratory for the European Right. But the movement to normalise remigration as a political project dates back much further. One of its ideological antecedents is the theory of ethnopluralism, advanced by French thinkers from the Nouvelle Droite and the Research and Study Group for European Civilisation (GRECE), founded in 1968 by Alain de Benoist. Rejecting universalism – the idea that all people share a common human worth – ethnopluralism legitimises a form of apartheid based not on explicit racism, but on the idea that peoples have fundamental, unbridgeable differences, and must therefore live in separate ethno-cultural regions.  

“The ideological core [of remigration] is nativism, the idea that nation-states should be populated by natives,” says Mattia Zulianello, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Trieste and an expert on populism, radicalism, and political extremism. He explains nativism splits into three strands: “Economic nativism holds that immigrants steal jobs from natives; welfare chauvinism claims migrants drain resources without contributing; and symbolic nativism sees migrants – especially Muslim migrants – as a threat to traditions and customs.”  

Linked to these ideas is also the conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement” articulated by another French writer and intellectual, Renaud Camus. In his 2011 book Le grand remplacement, Camus argues that mass immigration into Europe is part of a plan to end white European civilisation. Camus’s racism is also steeped in antisemitism: he claims a “globalist elite” made up of Jewish political and financial figures, along with the progressive world, is carrying out the transnational design of the “Great Replacement”.  

Leonardo Bianchi, a journalist, writer, and author of the newsletter Complotti! (“Conspiracies”), argues that the conspiratorial and ideological dimension lies at the heart of remigration as a political proposal: “It isn’t just about expelling migrants, but above all about stripping civil rights from citizens deemed ‘unassimilated’, meaning those who hold European passports but, in the movement’s own terms, aren’t ‘native’ – that is, not white and not Christian. 

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right Front National, helped spread Camus’s ideas. In his book Mémoires, he claimed that the “Great Replacement” is a fact and that the white world is dying. Over the years, Camus’s theory spread across Europe and reached the United States through the “alt-right” movement. It also inspired the perpetrators of terrorist, xenophobic massacres, such as the 2019 Christchurch attack in New Zealand.  

Parties and influencers  

The vocabulary of remigration emerged alongside the spread of Camus’s ideas. According to Zulianello, the first movements to talk about remigration, in the Netherlands and Belgium, were classic extreme-right groups: skinheads and ultras of varying degrees of extremism. But the idea initially had little traction.  

Among institutional political actors, Geert Wilders (the Eurosceptic and Islamophobic founder of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands) and the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”) were among the first to adopt the term between 2011 and 2012. Following the 2015 refugee crisis, the discourse on migration shifted rightward, and parties like Fidesz in Hungary began spreading Camus’s theories. As recently as 2022, during his inauguration speech for his fourth and final term as prime minister, Viktor Orbán said: “I see the great European population exchange as a suicidal attempt to replace the lack of European, Christian children with adults from other civilisations – migrants.” 

In Denmark too, the idea that migrants were siphoning off social resources meant for native citizens took hold in the political agenda. “Welfare chauvinism originated with the Dansk Folkeparti [“Danish People’s Party”], which then prompted other parties to follow suit, as they sought to replicate successful strategies,” says Zulianello. The theme later spread across various far-right parties in Europe. “The current wave owes to Alternative für Deutschland”.  

On 25 November 2023, AfD members, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, doctors, fraternity members, and even some figures from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) gathered at a hotel on Lake Lehnitz, near Potsdam. Martin Sellner, an Austrian neo-fascist ideologue and influencer, set out the strategy needed to normalise remigration, a long-term project meant to unfold over decades. He also spoke of a “model city” in North Africa where two million people would be relocated (that is, deported). The parallels with the Nazi plan to deport four million Jews to Madagascar are clear. The Potsdam meeting was meant to remain secret, but it was exposed by the independent investigative outlet Correctiv.  

“This theory isn’t harmless,” Bianchi comments. “As a project, it undermines the constitutions of European countries, which are founded on the fundamental principles of the post-World War II era. Both in Italy, under Article 22, and in Germany, under Article 16, these provisions stipulate that no one may be stripped of their citizenship on political grounds.” Born from the resolve never to repeat Nazi and fascist persecutions, these principles are now being challenged across Europe: by Chega in Portugal, Vox in Spain, and Reform UK in the United Kingdom.  

According to Zulianello, Europe’s radical right has also influenced its American counterpart, which in turn has helped mainstream the idea of remigration. After Elon Musk’s 2023 acquisition of Twitter, violent content circulated more freely, giving greater visibility to figures like Sellner. A report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found a spike of 71000 mentions of the term “remigration” on X between 1 and 8 September 2025, following coordinated posts from Musk himself and other prominent far-right figures, such as Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek.  

Donald Trump, too, has invoked and carried out expulsions of migrants, explicitly using the term “remigration” on the official channels of the Department of Homeland Security. But according to Zulianello, the real driving force behind this movement remains Europe.  

“What’s interesting about the Italian case,” says Zulianello, “is that the proposal didn’t originate from a party, but from a far-right network – the Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista”. As Bianchi points out, the Committee’s proposal “follows Martin Sellner’s plan to the letter, which sets out three steps: the deportation of irregular migrants, the restriction of the right to asylum and family reunification (which are also long-standing causes championed by the League), and voluntary remigration, which is anything but voluntary and targets all so-called ‘non-assimilated’ people.” 

The citizen initiative bill submitted in June aims to “regulate” migratory flows in order to combat irregular migration and exploitation. It proposes establishing a national “remigration Programme” to crack down on NGOs (allegedly “involved in migrant trafficking”), reduce flows of foreign workers, encourage the “return of Italian descendants”, and create a fund to boost Italy’s birth rate. These measures would be financed through a “remigration fund” of 500 million euros per year, raised through NGO asset seizures, a tax on remittances, and funds currently allocated to asylum policy. However, the proposal’s central problem isn’t economic but legal and constitutional: remigration openly violates the anti-fascist principles of the Italian Constitution and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.  

According to Zulianello, the initiative’s promoters “know that the proposal as it is is simply not feasible. What matters to them is getting the issue onto the agenda. By mainstreaming certain topics, the space for debate widens, and mainstream parties tend to want to fill that vacuum, effectively legitimising the issue and hardening anti-immigration policies.”  

The effects are already visible. A security package approved in April included an amendment that offered financial rewards to lawyers who successfully carried out voluntary repatriation procedures for migrants. Legal controversy over the measure later forced the government to amend it.  

Resisting normalisation 

Tickets to the Remigration Summit in Porto cost between 45 and 325 euros – a price justified by the stakes, according to the organisers: “With remigration, Europe will become more European day by day. Without remigration, it will become less European every day and will eventually cease to exist.” But the Europe imagined by remigration’s supporters – which is moving closer to the mainstream, also thanks to the cooperation between the centre-right and the far-right in the European Parliament – isn’t the only possible Europe. Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union states that “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.” 

According to Bianchi, opposing remigration and the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory means, above all, refusing to allow their normalisation as “common sense” proposals. “The term ‘remigration’ sounds neutral because it comes from the social sciences, but it’s an act of linguistic normalisation: its meaning and its origins are inseparable from the political project behind it.” 

Migration features prominently in Europe’s demographic debates, whether as a looming threat or as a silver bullet against ageing societies. With the EU’s normalisation of border externalisation and the far right’s growing emphasis on “remigration”, progressives have tried to reframe the debate around economic benefits, class, and inequality. But flawed narratives and a crisis of trust have blocked productive conversation. Former Green member of the European Parliament Judith Sargentini explains how we got to the current impasse – and how we might overcome it. 

This interview is part of the Green European Journal’s upcoming print edition on demographic futures, out in early June. Subscribe now and get it delivered straight to your door.

Green European Journal: Like other demographic debates, discussions about the future of migration tend to evoke extreme scenarios: mass climate-driven displacement on one side, intensifying competition for migrants on the other. Are these framings helpful? 

Judith Sargentini: Both contain a grain of truth. Climate change will drive mass movement; the Syrian civil war was deeply intertwined with the climate crisis, as is the civil war in Sudan. At the same time, ageing societies across Europe will increasingly need labour migrants, whatever the anti-immigration rhetoric says. But rather than dwelling on extreme scenarios that breed fear and anxiety, we should focus on the kind of societies we want to build. Yes, there is a housing shortage, but what caused it, and what policies can fix it? The same goes for climate change: if we fail to stop it, people will have to move because of it. But what we should be focusing on is how to hold to account those who fail to act on the climate emergency.

How did the discourse on migration shift over the years you worked on it in the European Parliament? 

As the only member of the European Parliament sitting on both the civil liberties (LIBE) committee – where migration files were handled – and the development (DEVE) committee, I witnessed an enormous shift in the narrative. 

Development funding had always been under pressure from the Right but was kept at an acceptable level on the basis that it would discourage migration. This was simply not true: when people are extremely poor, they lack the means to migrate. Successful development cooperation gives more people the opportunity to move. That is not an argument against it, but it shows a flaw in the debate. When that approach failed to deliver, the response was to cut development funds and build fences instead. We deluded ourselves into thinking that training and funding coast guards and police forces in Africa would stem migration flows to Europe. That, too, was flawed. 

There has been enormous misunderstanding about what drives migration and what can actually address it. Frontex had a budget of six million euros in 2005; by 2021, it was around one billion.

We remain trapped in the idea that better border control will stop people from moving. All it achieves is more irregular Migration. 

As the EU seeks to diversify its partnerships in response to the collapse of the “West” as a normative power, what part can migration policy play? 

I would question whether Europe has ever upheld the values it professes. Returning people to countries that are not even their own has always been a deeply unilateral approach – and one that has left Europe vulnerable to blackmail by autocrats who weaponise the threat of mass immigration. Deals like the one Italy struck with Albania function as propaganda tools until a judge rightly rules them illegal. 

Our entire approach to migration has been about sweeping dust under the carpet. We need to learn to listen instead. And this goes beyond migration: How do we engage with Global South countries? Are we treating them as equal partners? Are our trade agreements mutually beneficial? The Global South is not Europe’s wasteland. 

There has been enormous misunderstanding about what drives migration and what can actually address it.

How did we get to today’s debate, with its growing focus on externalising border management and the far right openly calling for “remigration”? 

In 2019, my final year as an MEP, I was rapporteur on the Returns Directive. Even then, there were debates about “return hubs” outside the EU, readmission agreements with countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia based on supposedly voluntary returns, and discussions with Tunisia about externalising asylum procedures. These weren’t new discussions: the EU had already signed a readmission agreement with Ukraine in 2007 and one with Pakistan in 2010. Underlying all of it was the idea that beyond EU borders lies a kind of terra incognita – unused space where we can place the migrants we don’t want. 

What is happening now is the logical continuation of that trajectory. The kind of agreement Giorgia Meloni is pursuing with Albania has been normalised by what happened years ago with other countries. The direction of travel has been consistent. 

As a member of the LIBE committee, you were also rapporteur on the erosion of the rule of law in Hungary under Viktor Orbán. What was the role of migration in his illiberal project? 

Orbán used migration – the Syrian crisis and the refugees coming through the Balkans – as a way to convince his fellow European People’s Party members that he was on the right track.¹ For many years, he succeeded in making others believe he had found a way to keep his country free of migrants. And he did – by locking people up at the border in deeply inhumane conditions or pushing them through to Austria, making Hungary unattractive to migrants and leaving neighbouring countries to deal with the consequences. It also helped convince his own citizens – you may recall the photos of Budapest’s central station filled with migrants waiting to move on – that he was keeping Hungary safe from people it couldn’t shelter. 

This narrative proved remarkably effective elsewhere, too – including in my country, the Netherlands. Many social democrats were comfortable with the 2016 EU-Turkey deal. Part of the deal was a “one-to-one” mechanism: Europe would return all new irregular migrants to Turkey, including Syrians, arriving on the Greek islands. For every Syrian returned, the EU committed to resettling one Syrian refugee from Turkey. It was a way to “educate” people not to come to Europe uninvited. Even within the Greens, it took a long time to grasp what was clear to some of us from the start: that the deal would lead to pushbacks and serious human rights abuses. 

In the Netherlands, two coalition governments have collapsed in recent years over asylum and migration policy, and these issues continue to be highly divisive. How do you make sense of this obsession? 

In April, the Dutch Senate voted on asylum legislation proposed by the previous government, in which the far right was the dominant coalition partner. One proposal would have effectively criminalised undocumented migrants – making it a criminal offence simply to be in the Netherlands without papers. It was struck down at the last minute because the far right withdrew its support, deeming it was not harsh enough. 

This shows how dramatically the terms of the debate have shifted. Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to be where we are now. This applies at the local level, too: there is legislation requiring that asylum seekers awaiting their procedures be housed and distributed across municipalities, but some city councils are refusing to comply with the law. Also in April, riots broke out in a town ordered to receive 110 asylum seekers. Demonstrations turned violent, and the building designated to house these people was trashed, forcing the police to intervene. 

The old narrative – that migrants steal our jobs – has largely faded. Nowadays, much of the discontent is about housing. The housing shortage is real, but it is the product of decades of neoliberal policy and chronic underbuilding – not immigration. Yet this narrative has been deliberately cultivated and amplified. It is a form of disinformation that centre-right parties have helped spread. 

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality is not uniquely Dutch. For example, Italy’s population remained stable in 2025 for the first time in 12 years thanks to net immigration, even as Giorgia Meloni’s government remains committed to keeping migrants out. If facts and figures have no hold, is the migration debate one that can only be won through narratives and emotions? 

I’ve wrestled with this question for a long time. We are not lying; we know the other side is. But a lie is extraordinarily difficult to dispel, whether with facts or counter-narratives. You are permanently on the defensive, because if you dedicate your time and energy to dismantling a lie, you are not telling your own story. Every left-wing politician struggles with this, even though we have become skilled storytellers. I’ve taken courses on crafting better narratives, but I’m not convinced there is a winning formula – certainly not in a TV debate, where the incentive is often spectacle rather than truth. 

After five years away from politics, I’m now an alderwoman in the city of Gouda. I have found that there is a profound crisis of trust – not only between citizens and politicians but also among politicians themselves. When I was group leader of [the Dutch Green-Left party] GroenLinks in the Amsterdam city council years ago, we disagreed fiercely with our opponents, but we shared procedures and maintained a working relationship. The same was largely true in Brussels: those of us who took the European Parliament seriously respected each other and shared common rules. Once that is gone, there is no basis for common ground and compromise. 

Back in 2015, I kept insisting there was no migration crisis – only a governance crisis. Now there is a trust crisis, and it runs through politics itself. That is the hardest thing to overcome. 

The growing salience of immigration in public debate has clearly favoured the Right. Does that mean progressives would be better served by taking migration off the agenda altogether rather than trying to win the argument? 

I think so, and the numbers support it, since asylum migration in particular is falling. In recent Dutch elections, we tried not to put emphasis on these topics, but they keep resurfacing because others drag them back in, and then everyone piles on. 

In fact, the absence of migration from the political debate used to be the norm. When I started working on migration in 2009, nobody paid much attention to the issue, and nobody in my party wanted to touch it, because there was nothing to gain. Do it well and no one notices; make a mistake and you lose votes. It was only with the Syrian crisis that I suddenly had competition from within my own party, because the issue had become exciting. You could shine and make your name through it. 

Every time migration returns to the spotlight, progressives drift rightward with it. 

Progressives in Europe are trying to win the migration argument in different ways, from the Danish Social Democrats shifting to the right, to Pedro Sánchez in Spain making an economic case for regularising migrants and UK Green leader Zack Polanski trying to reframe the debate around class and inequality. If you were a progressive leader today, which approach would you take? 

It is easier to say this from outside government, but I think Polanski is right: “the boats” are not the problem. The real issues are affordability and housing and their root causes. But for that narrative to take hold, others need to follow, and what we see instead is the opposite.  

Every time migration returns to the spotlight, progressives drift rightward with it. Which, in turn, shifts the debate further to the right. It is a vicious circle. I witnessed this in my own party. I recall colleagues arguing that we should only accept skilled asylum seekers. But that is not how asylum works. 

The ongoing merger between GroenLinks and [the social-democratic] Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) worries me on this front. As a Green, I believe in system change – in addressing root causes. But this is not the case for social democrats. If you are in a party that does not believe in system change, you take the current situation as a given, and all you can do is sand down the rough edges. 

What would you identify as the key elements of a green approach to migration? 

Today, labour is a stronger driver of migration than asylum. A guaranteed minimum income and strong social security benefit both migrant and local workers: giving people the power to refuse jobs with poor conditions, while giving newcomers a real chance at integration. Less neoliberalism, in short. 

The second element is flexibility. Right now, we are effectively locking people in. You arrive in Europe, you get your papers if you are lucky, but if you leave, you lose everything. We should turn migrants into expats. Expats can move, go home, and resettle elsewhere without bureaucratic walls blocking their way. 

Third, we need to look at migration in context and not as an isolated issue. Global redistribution of wealth, fair trade and investment, and decolonisation – these are not necessarily going to reduce migration numbers, but the point is giving people a choice to stay where they are if they so wish. 

1. Viktor Orbán’s far-right Fidesz party left the European People’s Party (EPP) in March 2021 to avoid being expelled.  ︎

Across the Middle East, labour migration is a defining demographic reality. An estimated 24 million migrant workers are employed across the region. The majority of them live in the Gulf states, including roughly 11 million in Saudi Arabia, 9 million in the United Arab Emirates, and 2 million in Qatar, forming the backbone of multiple economies. These workers sustain essential sectors ranging from construction and logistics to healthcare, retail, security, agriculture, and domestic work. In some of these countries, migrant workers far outnumber the local population. For instance, in the UAE, almost nine out of 10 residents are migrant workers.

Despite variations between states, the reliance on migrant labour is structural and widespread. Yet this demographic and economic centrality does not translate into social or legal inclusion. On the contrary, labour migrants remain structurally temporary, excluded from citizenship, and dependent on their employers for their legal status. The kafala sponsorship system employed mostly in the Gulf Cooperation Council nations and countries in the Levant (Jordan and Lebanon), sits at the centre of this paradox, transforming a numerical majority into a legally and politically marginalised workforce.  

How does kafala work?   

The kafala system, initially designed to attract non-permanent workers, is a temporary labour migration regime that ties a migrant worker’s residency status to an employer. 

It establishes a tripartite relationship between worker, sponsor, and state – one in which authority over migrants’ legal existence is delegated to private actors. The dependency it creates is built not just into the legal structure itself, but also into customs and practices. A worker’s right to remain in a certain country, change jobs, or leave is often contingent on the sponsor’s consent. Although some reforms have been introduced, the underlying problems persist: mobility is restricted, and the risks of contesting abusive conditions are still present.  

This unbalanced dynamic leads to systemic consequences. Since residency status is tied to employment, leaving an abusive employer could mean losing legal status. For migrant domestic workers, the situation is particularly acute. Frequently excluded from labour law protections and classified as “servants” rather than employees, they occupy a legal grey zone where minimum wage guarantees, working-hour limits, and mechanisms for redress often do not apply.  

The social order of kafala   

Migrant workers are not treated as a homogeneous group within the kafala system, which operates through hierarchies of nationality, race, class, and gender that shape access to rights, mobility, and protection.  

At the top of this hierarchy are expatriates, often originating from OECD countries and employed in sectors such as finance, education, and corporate management. Although subject to sponsorship requirements, they typically benefit from higher wages, greater mobility, and stronger institutional support. The middle tier includes professional and semi-skilled workers from countries like the Philippines and India, as well as elsewhere in the Arab world, working in sectors such as healthcare, retail, and technology.  

At the bottom are low-wage migrant workers from Asia and Africa, concentrated in the construction and domestic labour sectors, where protections are weakest and vulnerability to exploitation is highest. These divisions are also gendered: men are overrepresented in construction, while women make up the majority of domestic workers, often in highly isolated conditions.  

For domestic workers, control often extends beyond wages and hours, with live-in arrangements frequently blurring the boundary between work and private life. This can mean long hours, constant availability, limited privacy, and dependence on employers for permission to leave the house or maintain social ties. Wages and tasks are also frequently structured by racialised assumptions linked to nationality, reproducing hierarchies within the household itself.  

While the legal status of all categories remains tied to sponsorship, their ability to navigate this dependency varies significantly, reflecting wider inequalities.  

Majority without membership   

Periods of crisis expose the structural absence of comprehensive social protection for migrant workers. Existing inequalities tend to deepen with rising anti-migrant discourses, discrimination, and human rights violations, while state protections are often prioritised for citizens.  

The Israeli-American war with Iran has brought renewed attention to these vulnerabilities. Human rights organisations have raised concerns about workers whose legal status remains tied to their employers, limiting their ability to respond independently to rapidly deteriorating conditions. In Lebanon, for instance, domestic workers have been confined or abandoned by employers, at times without access to identity documents, and with limited means to secure evacuation, shelter, or assistance. In Qatar, delivery drivers were excluded from shelters. Moreover, across the Gulf, low-paid migrant workers often face additional barriers to evacuation, including financial constraints and obligations to support families abroad.  

Some employers have provided continued wages or assistance with return, but these cases remain limited. More broadly, crises reveal how quickly legal dependency can translate into precarity: under kafala, a worker’s ability to move and access protection remains contingent on a private relationship. 

Following the collapse of communism and the integration of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states into the EU, citizens of these regions used their newfound freedoms to emigrate westwards. Their home countries were ill-prepared for the economic and cultural effects this outflow would have but made little effort to maintain connections with their diasporas. Now, faced with increasing demographic, strategic, and democratic vulnerabilities, they are engineering ways to mend this fracture. 

For decades, Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Baltic EU member states experienced sustained emigration, with millions of citizens moving abroad. Governments welcomed remittance inflows and tried to adjust to domestic labour shortages, but engagement with their diasporas remained limited. This approach was partly shaped by the historical context. Magdalena Ulceluse, an assistant professor in international migration at Sweden’s Malmö University, explains, “Eastern European countries have a complicated relationship with free movement. Coming from a communist context where mobility was forbidden, emigration became associated with hard-won freedom.”  

However, a combination of long-standing structural factors and more recent developments is prompting these governments to rethink their social contract and relationship with their diaspora. While demographic decline has been an enduring challenge, driven in part by sustained emigration and persistently low birth rates, new pressures, including the war in Ukraine and rising political polarisation, are accelerating this shift. As a result, states are increasingly viewing their diasporas not only as economic contributors but also as politically relevant constituencies and key actors in security and demographic arenas.  

Emigration has been significant. Of Romania’s roughly 19 million citizens, for example, nearly a quarter live abroad, mostly in Western Europe. They form the largest diaspora in the EU. Around two-thirds are economic migrants, filling jobs in, among others, construction, social care for elderly people, and seasonal agriculture that workers in host societies are no longer willing to take. In 2023 alone, they sent home 6.5 billion euros in remittances – nearly 3 per cent of Romania’s GDP. Poland had around 1.5 million citizens living elsewhere in the EU at the end of 2023, with remittances accounting for 1.1 per cent of GDP. Latvia, with a population of just 1.86 million, has seen between 280,000 and 300,000 nationals or former nationals – more than 15 per cent of its population – settle in EU or OECD countries.  

Eastern European countries have a complicated relationship with free movement.

These emigration flows largely occurred after these countries’ EU accession (Poland and Latvia joined in 2004, Romania in 2007). Migrants were enticed by higher wages and more stable labour markets in countries such as Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Italy. “In the home countries, the costs of emigration were visible from the beginning,” Ulceluse notes, “but diaspora policies did not substantially change until the political dimension arrived through polarisation and the rise of far-right parties.”  

Neglected and seduced   

For Romania, the political consequences of two decades of inertia have become impossible to ignore. In 2024, the country’s constitutional court cancelled elections due to alleged foreign interference and illegal campaign funding; during the re-run last year, pro-European candidate Nicușor Dan beat far-right candidate George Simion but not without some shock results: among diaspora communities in Germany, Italy, and Spain – countries with large Romanian communities – Simion received approximately 70 per cent of the vote. 

Ulceluse argues that the scale of Simion’s diaspora support reflects a shift in who has been leaving Romania. “The early waves included many highly skilled migrants, middle-class professionals moving into skilled jobs abroad. But, in recent years, recruitment agencies have spread across the country, into villages, offering to take people from their doorstep to accommodation in the Netherlands or Belgium. That infrastructure opened the door to a much more diverse group of migrants.”  

For many of them, particularly those in agricultural work, the experience abroad has been one of profound isolation. “They live apart, don’t speak the language, and carry a deep sense of mistrust, even toward fellow Romanians,” says Ulceluse. “They feel invisible: no opportunities at home, and no recognition abroad.”  

The Covid-19 pandemic deepened their grievances: workers in precarious or seasonal employment were frequently excluded from social protection, healthcare, and financial aid in host countries. Meanwhile, the Romanian authorities, including the president at the time, discouraged them from returning home for the holidays for fear of bringing the virus into the country. Continuously rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis further strained their finances, with remittances falling sharply in 2024. 

Mainstream politicians from the liberal and social-democratic parties only remembered them during campaigns, offering slogans and asking for their vote. Simion’s far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians party (AUR), by contrast, has made a consistent effort to engage the diaspora. The party has actively sought to meet diaspora communities where they are, engaging a wide range of social groups, from truck drivers in parking lots to participants in diaspora nonprofit events. At the last elections, these efforts paid off, even if they were not sufficient for Simion to win.  

Estonia’s right-wing nationalist Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) is able to tell a similar story. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, it won 43.7 per cent of the diaspora postal vote – albeit from a relatively small segment of the overall Estonian electorate abroad (mainly by expats in Finland and Sweden). Vassilis Petsinis, an associate professor of politics at Corvinus University of Budapest, attributes part of this support to EKRE’s emphasis on return policies. “EKRE has advocated for facilitating the return of Estonian emigrants and developing infrastructure to support reintegration,” he says, noting that such policies may have especially appealed to certain groups, like blue-collar workers. 

An obligation to serve?   

Across cases such as Romania and Estonia, diaspora voting patterns suggest that alienation and disenfranchisement abroad, if sustained for long enough, can harden into extreme political choices.  

Alienation and disenfranchisement abroad, if sustained for long enough, can harden into extreme political choices.

But voting patterns are only part of the picture. Governments’ relations with their diasporas are increasingly being reshaped by security considerations. The return of large-scale military conflict to Europe has raised an immediate, practical question: What can states legitimately ask of their citizens living abroad, including when it comes to defending their homeland?  

While Romania has not reintroduced mandatory military service, it approved a draft law in 2025 establishing voluntary four-month military training for citizens aged 18 to 35, whether residing in Romania or abroad. The legislation was framed as a mechanism for building reserve capacity, but the Romanian government has begun to build the legal and institutional framework through which citizens abroad could be incorporated into national defence if the security environment deteriorates. When asked about drafting the diaspora in the event of war, Romania’s chief of staff, General Vlad Gheorghiță, stated that military service “remains a constitutional duty for all and a legal obligation”.  

Estonia is amending its compulsory military service, whereby citizens must serve for between eight and 11 months, to 12 months starting in 2027, including for the diaspora, though a certain portion of it is excluded. Citizens who have resided abroad continuously for at least seven years prior to entering the national defence obligation register, or who were born abroad and lived there immediately before registration, may be released from service obligations if they do not request to serve within five years. Those falling outside these exemptions remain within the conscription pool.  

Latvia is also reintroducing mandatory military service, with seemingly fewer exemptions than Estonia. Until 2027, Latvian citizens permanently residing abroad and registered with the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs are exempt from draft lists. After that transition period ends, diaspora Latvians may be called up by the National Defence Service. According to Māris Andžāns, director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies in Riga, conscripting the diaspora will likely cut both ways. He argues that it “could incentivise some dual citizens to renounce Latvian citizenship”, but spending 11 months in Latvia, as the service requires, could equally “strengthen the bond with the country”. A passport, as he puts it, comes “not only with opportunities, but also obligations”.  

What remains harder to predict is how different generations of Latvians abroad will react. Andžāns is careful not to assume that recent emigrants are more attached to their home country than those whose families left decades ago. “Some non-Latvian-speaking Americans of Latvian descent might be more willing to serve than those who left recently,” he believes. More recent emigrants, he suggests, often departed because they felt they could not build a life in Latvia, and they may feel little pull to return.  

The Latvian government is already running workshops at embassies and diaspora camps abroad to explain the policy and manage expectations. But, as Andžāns acknowledges, the next five years will be the real test of which direction the diaspora moves in. More broadly, Andžāns stresses that the return of conscription is not just a Latvian or Baltic phenomenon but part of a wider European shift driven by security concerns and demographic pressures. 

New strategies   

These security concerns are unfolding against a deeper structural backdrop: demographic decline. Population projections for the region are worrisome. Romania’s population is expected to decline from approximately 19 million today to 14 million by 2100 without accounting for immigration; Poland’s from 38 million to 24 million. 

Lower fertility rates are a key driver, but sustained emigration has compounded the pressure considerably. In Romania, some analysts expect long-term structural effects. Remus Gabriel Anghel, professor at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration and a researcher at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, says that “a significant part of the Romanian rural population will probably disappear”, with population increasingly concentrated in urban centres of different sizes. Immigration, he argues, is unlikely to fill the gap. In public institutions and companies, “in the future, you will need people with at least an acceptable level of Romanian to write, read, and prepare documents”, a requirement that limits how much of the shortfall can be offset by outside arrivals. In principle, Moldovans, whose official language is also Romanian, could help fill some of these gaps. But rather than settling in their neighbouring country, many prefer to migrate to Western and Southern European countries, such as Italy, or head east to Russia in search of better economic prospects.  

Even with low-skilled labour, Anghel foresees that scaling up immigration would not be easy. Despite the current modest scale of foreign labour in Romania, populist and anti-immigration rhetoric is already gaining ground, suggesting that the political ceiling for any managed immigration programme may be lower than the demographic need would warrant. The implication is that diaspora return, or at least the maintenance of strong diaspora ties that may eventually facilitate return, is among the more tractable policy levers available.  

In response to these challenges, governments in the CEE and Baltic regions have spent the past few years trying to reshape their diaspora policy. According to a report published in 2025 by the EU Global Diaspora Facility, 13 EU member states, including Romania, Latvia and Poland, now have a dedicated diaspora law, strategy, or policy. The report also identified 97 public institutions across the EU involved in diaspora-related policy.  

Poland has embarked on one of the most comprehensive attempts at reform. In the last few years, the country has been adapting its policies to the reality that the diaspora now includes “the next generations of the Polish community, people who were not born in Poland, and émigrés”. 

In late 2025, Poland’s deputy prime minister stressed the need to “intensify and modernise methods of teaching Polish, including as a foreign language, in Polish community schools and in the education systems of the countries where members of the Polish community live”. This came not long after the Polish Council of Ministers adopted the Government Strategy for Cooperation with the Polish Diaspora and Poles Abroad for 2025–2030. Opportunities for younger members of the diaspora are a key focus of this strategy. As part of it, in 2026, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched programmes targeting young people of Polish origin, including study visits to Poland and business internship programmes intended to make relocation and settlement feel like a realistic option.  

Bastian Sendhardt, a research associate at the German Institute of Polish Affairs (DPI), says that these recent measures signal “a shift toward a more strategic and state-driven approach to managing transnational national ties”.Yet Sendhardt notes their reach is uneven.

Despite policy gaps and failures, some diaspora members are nevertheless returning.

They tend to work best “for those who already have some connection to Poland”, as they offer support at key moments such as education or early career mobility. As a result, the policies remain “structurally limited”, primarily engaging individuals who are already mobile and culturally connected, rather than more assimilated later generations. In this sense, they “are better understood as reinforcing existing connections than as reversing longer-term processes of detachment”.  

Romania is also in a process of overhauling its diaspora policy, with an added push following last year’s elections. Over the years, the country has expanded its consular network, funded programmes aimed at preserving Romanian identity abroad, and introduced initiatives to encourage return migration, including financial support for returning entrepreneurs.  

Researchers question these policies’ effectiveness. “In Romania, there is a lot of rhetoric about engaging the diaspora, but no effective diaspora policy,” stresses Anghel. “The only consistent programme, Start-Up Diaspora, has mostly helped those who were already planning to return.” The EU Global Diaspora Facility report’s author, Maria Regina Tongson, agrees. She states that,“countries can adopt policies on paper without necessarily allocating resources to implement them, especially if the goal is simply to give symbolic visibility to their diaspora.”  

Romania’s political leadership has also acknowledged these shortcomings. Shortly after his election, President Dan admitted, “Romania does not have a real strategy for the Romanians in the diaspora, doesn’t have an exhaustive survey on the needs of these people.” He added that the foreign affairs ministry and the presidency will need to develop a strategy with “objectives, budgets, and deadlines”.6 

Belonging can be cultivated through language, culture, and sustained engagement rather than symbolic gestures. 

For a state that spent two decades receiving remittances while offering little in return, the admission was telling. When finally forced to act, Romania’s response was to promise the kind of basic policy infrastructure that might have been expected to be in place earlier. At the time of writing, no such strategy had been formally published.  

Despite policy gaps and failures, some diaspora members are nevertheless returning. In 2022, around 190,000 Romanian citizens who were living abroad moved home. In 2023, that figure rose to approximately 218,000. In Poland, 19,500 people returned permanently in 2024, nearly 30 per cent more than in 2023. Up to 300,000 Poles are estimated to have moved back to the country since 2017.  

Anghel is careful not to attribute this to the government’s diaspora strategy. What is drawing people back, he argues, is a convergence of more prosaic forces: family, culture, exhaustion, and the situation of Western European labour markets, where salaries have stagnated and rents have risen sharply since the peak emigration years. “Going to Western Europe brings much fewer comparative returns than it did 15 years ago,” he says.  

What a passport means  

Since entering the EU, CEE and Baltic states have benefitted from their citizens’ labour abroad, from receiving remittances to exporting unemployment, and have offered little in return. Now, facing increasing vulnerabilities – demographic, strategic, democratic – they are starting to ask for more from their citizens: a vote cast in their direction, a military obligation honoured, a cultural loyalty maintained.  

At its core, what many European governments are facing, particularly in the CEE and Baltic regions, is a question about the social contract: specifically, what it means when that contract is broken by one party. For first-generation emigrants, the calculation is immediate and personal: what they gave, what they received, and whether a meaningful bond still exists. For second- and third-generation emigrants, no such reference point exists.“They often feel more German, Italian than Romanian, even though both parents are Romanian,” says Anghel, “because they grew up there and developed their references there.”  

They did not leave. Many of them were never there. The social contract was not broken; it was never made. A passport becomes, for many, a matter of paperwork rather than identity, a connection sustained, if at all, through fragments: a grandparent’s language, a paid-for visit, an inherited name.  

Sendhardt agrees that,“there is a clear structural pull toward the country of residence, where individuals are embedded in education systems, labour markets, and everyday social life.” He adds that attachment to the home country persists but “more as a symbolic or familial reference point than as a primary site of political or social loyalty”. Yet identity is not fixed, and belonging can be cultivated through language, culture, and sustained engagement rather than symbolic gestures.  

Poland’s outreach to younger diaspora communities suggests that some countries are beginning to recognise this. For Sendhardt, the most effective policies are those that create sustained, practical engagement such as language education, youth exchanges, study programmes, internships, and professional opportunities linked to Poland. This is because “they embed Poland in people’s lived experiences rather than appealing only to abstract notions of identity.” However, he cautions that, “their impact depends heavily on accessibility and continuity: one-off programmes tend to have limited long-term effects.”  

These tensions also unfold within a broader European project that remains, in important respects, unfinished. The EU’s post-national promise, embodied in free movement and deep economic integration, has enabled a “cross-contamination” of identities and life trajectories across borders. Yet key dimensions of belonging and obligations remain national, from emotional attachments and political narratives to more concrete elements such as military service. The result is a layered and sometimes contradictory landscape in which individuals live transnational lives, while states continue to make claims rooted in national frameworks.  

For CEE and Baltic states, this contradiction is particularly significant: they were among the greatest contributors to the EU’s experiment in free movement and among the least prepared for what it would cost them. The defining question that they now face is whether they can still close a gap they allowed to widen for decades, especially across generations. How they answer may determine not only the future of their diasporas but also their resilience as states. 

Despite declining immigration figures, consistent signs of successful “integration”, and an economic demand for labour migrants, migration continues to monopolise the Dutch political debate. Where does this obsession come from? And what would it take to finally overcome it?

In 2023, Dutch migration scholar Hein de Haas published How migration really works, which debunks common myths about the subject. The book quickly became a bestseller, but its success did not seem to have any effect on Dutch politics.

In July that year, the coalition government led by Mark Rutte collapsed because of disagreements over asylum policies. Two years later, his successor, Dick Schoof, saw his coalition fall too, after the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) withdrew from the government. The reason? The coalition partners had failed to back the PVV’s policies aimed at cracking down on asylum. This was despite the fact that the Netherlands’ migration discourse has significantly shifted to the right in recent years.

Migration facts and figures show that there is little new or unusual going on to justify this attention. The Netherlands has been a country of immigration and emigration throughout its history. The arrival of asylum seekers is not a recent phenomenon, and dealing with diversity, including religious diversity, is an essential part of Dutch national identity. Moreover, the Dutch economy needs migration, and the integration process, as official reports show year after year, is progressing smoothly. And compared to other European countries, the Netherlands is average rather than a frontrunner when it comes to immigration or to asylum migration in particular. The percentage of first asylum applications in the Netherlands was about 0.18 per cent of the total population in 2024, compared to 0.66 per cent in Greece, and about 0.28 per cent in Germany and Belgium.

What is the obsession with migration really about, then? And where does it come from? 

The Dutch migration debate is about so much more than just migration. It reveals how society, politics, the media, and the scientific community are grappling with the rapid changes and increasing societal complexity associated with globalisation. In 2024, Prime Minister Schoof argued that there was a need for tougher migration policies because “Dutch people experience a crisis.” The perception of crisis – and the persistent use of crisis language – demonstrates that something is indeed wrong in society. This also manifests itself in “moral panic”, where migration is seen as the cause of a decline in norms and values, Dutch identity, and much more. This panic feeds narratives blaming migration for virtually every problem society experiences: asylum seekers cause the housing crisis, international students undermine the education system, and migrants are primarily responsible for security issues

Rather than being dismissed as simply irrational, this sensation of crisis should be the starting point for understanding the Dutch migration obsession.

Rather than being dismissed as simply irrational, the sensation of crisis should be the starting point for understanding the Dutch migration obsession.

A shift in political culture

Migration is often a polarising issue, and the Netherlands is no exception in this regard. In the Dutch case, however, migration is the core issue of contestation around which national political culture has changed radically. From a consensus-driven culture of pacification – the “consociationalism” theorised by Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart – the country shifted to a culture of confrontation and “hyper-realism”, where the ability to identify and “label” problems is considered essential.

Migration was already on the political agenda long before this shift took place. But there was broad consensus on the policies to adopt, and a clear understanding that knowledge and expertise should play a central role in designing them.

This started to change with the rise of academic and businessman Pim Fortuyn in Dutch politics between 2000 and 2002. By connecting uncertainty and discontent in society with migration, multiculturalism, and Islam, Fortuyn triggered a new political logic that has only intensified since then. Although he was assassinated in 2002 and his party imploded soon after, the kind of populism Fortuyn introduced to Dutch politics was there to stay, as demonstrated by Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (founded in 2006) and Thierry Baudet’s even more extreme Forum for Democracy (established in 2015).

Unlike in other European countries, centrist political forces never implemented a cordon sanitaire against the far right: the Pim Fortuyn List was part of a coalition government between 2002 and 2003, and the Party for Freedom provided external support to a minority government between 2010 and 2012. After a decade in opposition, Wilders’ party became the largest force in parliament and the main player in the Schoof government.

While these parties played a major role in shifting the discourse around migration, their power should not be overestimated. Their strength is, at least in part, due to the weakness of mainstream parties. None of the established political forces had a clear narrative on migration, allowing insecurities about social change to be diverted onto multiculturalism. The social-democratic and green party GroenLinks/PvdA was caught in a “progressive dilemma” between solidarity with migrants and the protection of the Dutch working classes and the welfare state; the liberal VVD was split between (primarily economically driven) liberals and (more culturally driven) conservatives; and the Christian-democratic CDA couldn’t reconcile its championing of religious diversity in general with concerns for the rise of Islam.

These ambivalent attitudes left room for right-wing populist parties to shape public narratives on migration. Even now, parties of the political centre haven’t figured out how and to what extent they should speak up against the highly provocative statements of Wilders and his party. However, the last decades have shown that not countering populist voices doesn’t help to overcome the migration obsession. On the contrary, it has enabled populist parties to focus the political attention entirely on migration and shape the Dutch public mood accordingly.

Migranticising problems

The migration obsession isn’t a product of party politics alone. Migration has become the catalyst of a broader discontent with globalisation.

The Dutch economy is very globally oriented. Its companies attract labour migrants, including “knowledge migrants”, but they also affect the countries of origin of many migrants through their impact on global inequalities, climate change, culture, and politics. Economic globalisation is therefore a major driver of social change. However, when discussing issues connected to housing, education, climate, and culture, migration is often framed as a cause rather than a consequence.

Migration has become the catalyst of a broader discontent with globalisation.

The housing crisis is a prime example of this “migranticisation”. The Netherlands has a vast housing shortage of approximately 400,000 homes, of which only a small fraction (about 50,000) would be needed for settling refugees. Yet the public debate consistently blames this shortage on asylum seekers rather than on the country’s neoliberal housing policies.

Similarly, knowledge workers and other labour migrants are held responsible for “stealing” jobs, while a broader debate is missing on how and why the Dutch economy has a structural demand for labour migration. The Dutch desire to have a strong, globally competitive economy is not accompanied by an honest conversation on the amount of migration that this economy needs. In this sense, the migration obsession is a form of “redirected behaviour” – the venting of frustration about one problem on another.

The role of statistics

This dynamic is also fuelled by how being a “migrant” (even a “second-generation migrant”, who has never migrated) or going through a process of “integration” tends to be objectified by government-compiled statistics. Few countries collect as extensive ethnic data and migration statistics as the Netherlands. For each migrant group, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) collect information on everything from influx to labour force participation and crime rate.

This information, like any type of data, contributes to identifying differences, whether negative or positive. The availability of this data enables a media logic that tends to focus on bad rather than good news. For example, crime rates will find more space in media discourse than labour market participation and contribution to the economy.

Furthermore, the media’s use of this data tends to ignore that socio-economic variables matter much more to successful “integration” than ethnic background and nationality. For example, the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy showed that the crime rate among asylum seekers was actually lower than the national average when their demographic profile (age, gender) and socio-economic profile (education, language, income) were taken into account.

Yet the Netherlands has a long political and media tradition of shaping policies and public discourses on nationality and ethnicity data. While this approach can be driven by a desire for informed and evidence-based debate, it has contributed to fuelling the migration obsession.

The media effect

Aside from its use of ethnicity statistics, the media feeds the obsession in ways that are not unique to the Dutch context. Like other countries, the Netherlands has experienced over the past decades a diversification and commercialisation of its media landscape, with different channels having to fiercely compete for attention. The rise of social media has also played into the politics of attention and created echo-chambers, undermining the “control function” of media in a democratic context. As a result, the (online) media have replaced parliament as the main arena of political debate. Geert Wilders’ savvy use of X is just one example of this.

Migration perfectly suits the dynamics of the attention economy. To elicit emotions and reactions, media coverage on migration employs a combination of dramatic crisis language, exciting stories about what is wrong with current policy and what could still go wrong, stories about authorities’ failures to control flows, and reports on incidents that are blown out of proportion or “migranticised”. Social media then adds a tunnel or echo effect, whereby people’s suspicions and feelings are repeatedly reinforced.

The migration obsession thrives on the interplay between media and politics. Politics seeks to “name” a sense of crisis surrounding migration, the media shapes this feeling, and social discontent grows as a result. Readers of leading conservative newspapers like De Telegraaf and those who spend a lot of time on social media are constantly bombarded with highly “migranticised” news coverage, actively amplified by politicians. In this context, it is hardly surprising that citizens become concerned with migration.

Finally, the migration debate in the Netherlands is largely about migrants rather than with them. The lack of a counterpoint distinguishes the discussion on migration from that on other policy areas, such as farming and agriculture, where opposing perspectives are regularly granted space and attention. This means that the migration obsession can go unchecked; it can roam freely.

The poison and the cure

The migration obsession has very real effects on Dutch society. It contributes significantly to the alienation of a growing part of the population – especially people with a migration background. A 2024 study from the Social and Cultural Planning Office found signs of growing apathy amongst part of the population, triggered by the exclusionist tendencies of the debate on migration.

But there are broader consequences too. The obsession undermines the quality of policy and policymaking in the area of migration and diversity. The constant pressure, politicisation, and migranticisation create an imbalance between inflating problems on the one hand and the inability to come up with workable solutions on the other. This is manifest in the area of asylum in particular, where chaos is not a product of unmanageable migration flow but rather of bad policies, underresourcing, and suspicion towards implementing agencies. There is no asylum crisis but an asylum chaos: solving it demands better, not stricter policy.

There is no asylum crisis but an asylum chaos: solving it demands better, not stricter policy.

Inflating migration issues as a strategy of distraction also harms trust in government and democratic institutions. Today, only four per cent of Dutch citizens declare that they trust the government. The politics of fear around migration, as well as unmet expectations that the government would be able to “fix” migration and integration, has contributed to declining trust levels. In this sense, the migration obsession is a key element of a vicious circle that undermines democracy.

Overcoming the migration obsession demands more than just hope that populist and radical-right parties are voted out of power. It requires that all political parties tell a clear and honest story about migration, and why the Netherlands needs so much of it. Rather than obsessing over migration as a symptom, this story should focus on its structural roots, and open a debate on the model and direction of the Dutch economy.

Greater sensitivity and reflexivity on the part of the media are also needed to deconstruct how “migration language” is used and broader problems are “migranticised”. This does not mean there should be no debate on migration, but rather proves that we need a discourse of better quality, with much greater precision and honesty. The general public also has a responsibility to demand and foster a healthier discussion. Blaming it all on the populists is way too easy.

The meandering ribbon of the Bug River passes through Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, following stretches of one of the most controlled borders of Europe. The river, known for its unique ecosystem, is the site of growing political tension and a worsening humanitarian crisis. Once a symbol of coexistence between nature and human civilisation, the Bug is now a political battlefield, flanked by heavy barriers and fallen trees.

The Bug River forms a natural border between Poland and parts of northwestern Ukraine and southern Belarus. It is a lifeline for ecosystems, but is now caught in the crossfire of politics and security. In a bid to strengthen its eastern frontier, in September 2024, Poland started work on a 172 km-long electronic surveillance barrier near the border with Belarus that follows the course of the river. While the barrier is framed as a matter of national security, its construction has led to large-scale deforestation. Surveillance poles equipped with motion sensors and cameras now dot the landscape. Once a seamless ecological corridor, the banks of the Bug River now mark a dividing line. 

The 2021 migration crisis deepened the rift between Belarus and Poland, effectively ending their joint environmental efforts. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s role as a co-aggressor, any remaining cooperation on ecological protection along the Bug River has ground to a halt. 

The result? A stark rise in deforestation, pollution, and disruption of animal migration routes. The increasing militarisation of the border leaves scars on the landscape that may be difficult – or even impossible – to heal. Without renewed dialogue and cross-border conservation initiatives, the Bug’s fragile biodiversity could soon be irreparably damaged. 

A lifeline of Eastern Europe 

Stretching almost 800 kilometres across Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland, the Bug River is one of Eastern Europe’s most significant transboundary waterways. It originates in western Ukraine, near the village of Verkhobuzh in the Podolian Upland, and winds through the lowlands of Brest and the Pribugh Plain. In Poland, it joins the Narew River and eventually feeds into the Vistula, whose waters reach the Baltic Sea. 

The river’s course is geopolitically meaningful: nearly half its length runs through Poland, while about 20 per cent flows through Belarus. Ukraine accounts for over a quarter of the river’s drainage basin. But beyond geography, the Bug holds a more profound historical significance – it has served as a political boundary for more than half a century. 

After World War II, the Bug River became part of Poland’s eastern border, separating it from the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet republics. Today, it marks not only national borders but also the frontiers of the European Union and the Schengen Area. 

When the Belarusian government began weaponising migration in response to EU sanctions, Poland declared a state of emergency in its border regions. 

Ecologically, the Bug is one of Europe’s last remaining wild rivers – a rare, unregulated waterway that still flows in a largely natural state. It forms a vital ecological corridor, supporting a rich mosaic of habitats for fish, birds, amphibians, and aquatic plants. Its largely untouched banks provide critical resources for local communities and serve as natural filters, purifying water and maintaining regional biodiversity. The Bug River Valley encompasses several protected areas, including Natura 2000 sites, highlighting its natural importance. 

However, the lack of cross-border cooperation on environmental protection between Poland and Belarus and increasing border militarisation has led to logging, pollution, and the disruption of animal migration patterns. 

Threats of border militarisation 

Over the years, activity along the border has left a mark on the local ecosystem. While the level of patrol and surveillance has fluctuated with the political climate, at times easing to allow for cross-border cooperation, including on ecological initiatives, the past four years have seen a steady worsening in conditions. The rate of environmental damage has escalated since 2021, while the humanitarian crisis has deepened.  

When the Belarusian government began weaponising migration in response to EU sanctions, directing people from countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa towards the EU with false promises of easy access, Poland declared a state of emergency in its border regions. 

That same year, a barbed wire barrier was installed along the border, including across the riverbanks. The impact was immediate and devastating: many animals became fatally entangled in the concertina wire while migrating or seeking water. The injuries were often gruesome; deep lacerations caused immense suffering. Although the wire began to be dismantled in late 2024, its environmental cost remains, with leftover fragments continuing to harm wildlife. 

Now, a new phase of border surveillance infrastructure building is underway. Plans include the installation of approximately 1,800 camera poles, 4,500 day-night and thermal cameras, and various sensors to detect physical movement. The project also involves laying 200 kilometres of power and data transmission cables and constructing the foundations for around ten telecommunication containers. Thousands of trees have been felled along a 15-meter-wide strip on the Polish side of the river, including in the ecologically valuable Podlasie Switzerland reserve, to make space. 

Poland’s border protection laws exempt such projects from environmental assessments. Although contractors are meant to consult Regional Environmental Protection Directorates, deforestation has already extended into sensitive natural areas, destroying habitats vital to many bird species. 

Professor Maciej Karpowicz, a hydrobiologist at the University of Białystok, emphasises that large-scale logging along the river can increase the risk of hydrological droughts, cause bank erosion, and destabilise the riverbed. Without trees to act as natural barriers, pollution levels in the Bug’s waters might rise, degrading water quality. Poland has among the fewest renewable freshwater resources in Europe. Water scarcity is a growing problem this year: the beginning of 2025 was exceptionally dry, with minimal snowfall in the mountains and critically low river levels. As of April, the outlook remains bleak: Poland’s National Geological Institute highlights low water conditions across 12 of the 16 voivodeships. 

Maciej Cmoch, ornithologist and author of a book on the Bug, notes that riparian forests are being lost due to logging next to the river. “Fortunately, the cut strip is relatively narrow but includes trees and shrubs growing beside the river,” Cmoch warns. “These are valuable habitats for many birds that now face loss of breeding, resting and lurking sites.”  

The situation causes suffering for other species. Izabela Kadłucka, biologist and president of the coalition of foundations Niech Żyją! (“Let Them Live!”), stresses the river’s role as an ecological corridor. “The Bug River allows species to migrate. With such extensive changes, migration will be seriously disrupted, first during construction and later as organisms struggle to adapt,” she says. “The river is also a crucial watering place and a shelter in extreme weather. Now, it is losing these functions. Aquatic organisms will suffer from rising water temperatures and the loss of shade.” 

Poland: stopping migration at all costs 

Despite the environmental and financial costs involved in securitising the border, the number of people attempting to cross the Bug is not high. According to an investigation published by Oko.Press in December 2024, the Polish Border Guard prevented 395 people from illegally crossing the Polish-Belarusian border along its river section last year – a relatively small number in the broader context of migration. As stated by the Podlaskie Voivodeship Branch of the Border Guard, in 2024, officers recorded nearly 30,000 attempts to cross the border between the two countries illegally. 

The Polish government’s priorities became clear in March 2025 when the parliament approved plans to temporarily suspend asylum applications in case of direct security threats. Humanitarian organisations have condemned the move. Grupa Granica, a solidarity network of humanitarian aid groups on the Polish-Belarusian border, states: “The statistics show that the Polish-Belarusian border is mainly crossed by people from countries gripped by conflicts and crises. Poland will cease to be the first safe country in the EU for them. Those seeking refuge in Europe, deprived of the opportunity to apply for international protection in Poland, will be pushed into the grey zone. Smugglers and human traffickers will benefit.” 

Despite the environmental and financial costs involved in securitising the border, the number of people attempting to cross the Bug is not high.

Polish and international NGOs insist that the right to seek asylum is a fundamental human right that must not be revoked, regardless of geopolitical pressures. While the European Union has urged Poland to respect human rights and ensure access to humanitarian organisations, the political rhetoric across Europe continues to harden. 

It was apparent in the lead-up to Germany’s federal election this February, and in the ongoing presidential campaign in Poland. Border protection and migration control have become dominant campaign themes. “Security” is the promise repeated most. Yet the human and environmental costs of these policies remain largely ignored. 

Belarus’ environmental information blackout 

While Poland prioritises border security over ecological concerns, Belarus has imposed strict information controls on environmental issues. After the 2020 protests related to the non-recognition of the presidential election results, authorities closed all NGOs, and many environmental activists were put behind bars. Around the same time, Belarus withdrew from the Aarhus Convention, which grants the public rights regarding access to information, participation, and justice in environmental matters. 

The available information on the pollution of the Bug River does not give a full picture of the scale of the environmental problem. The website of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus (Minprirody) publishes quarterly data on surface water monitoring. However, this information is presented in an inconvenient text format, which makes it difficult to identify clear trends and patterns. 

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Belarus, Poland and Ukraine cooperated on transboundary environmental protection. Experts exchanged water quality data, conducted joint monitoring, and shared expertise. Interaction took place not only between official state institutions, but also between NGOs and environmental activists. One such example is the Bug Unites Us project: the organisers proposed to create canoeing routes on the Bug River through Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. The project received financial support from the EU: 1.4 million euros were allocated for its implementation in 2014-2020 within the framework of the cross-border cooperation programme “Poland-Belarus-Ukraine”.  

Two places were identified between Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine where, during the tourist season, it would be possible to pass border controls and cross the river border on kayaks. However, due to the tense geopolitical situation, the international routes never got off the ground. Rafting is now only done within each country. 

Environmental activists from Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine have also joined forces to oppose the E40 waterway project: a more than 2000-kilometre shipping route along the Vistula, Pripyat and Dnieper rivers to connect the Baltic and Black Seas. They have repeatedly held protests against the plan’s implementation, with the activity peaking in 2018. Officials (both Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian) were actively working on the E40’s development from 2016 to 2019. Activists argued however that it would have destroyed the unique nature of the Polesie region. A report by Save Polesia – a coalition of civil society organisations from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Germany – reveals that the planned waterway would threaten nearly 200 internationally protected areas across the three countries, including several Natura 2000 sites. 

The suppression of environmental information in Belarus is directly linked to the government’s fear of protests.

As relations worsened between the three countries, the E40 project was eventually frozen, making it a rare example of how political tensions can serve to prevent further damage to ecological features.  

In any case, the involvement of activists from Belarus ceased after the government’s crackdown on NGOs following the 2020 protests. Reports are still being issued, but only by groups in Poland and Ukraine, which signed an agreement on border water management as early as 1996. The Polish-Ukrainian Boundary Waters Commission conducts monthly surveys on the Polish and Ukrainian sides. In recent years, the two countries have used different methodologies, which has made creating joint reports difficult. However, there is the prospect of facilitating better cooperation – Ukraine is now introducing water monitoring in accordance with the requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive. Additionally, in March 2025, the EU and Ukraine launched the EU4Green Recovery East programme, which, among other goals, supports the reduction of water pollution and better cross-border cooperation. 

The suppression of environmental information in Belarus is directly linked to the government’s fear of protests. In 2017, citizens opposed the construction of a battery factory near the Bug River, fearing high lead emissions. Despite protests, the plant began operations in 2020. Given past environmental scandals – including 8,000 tonnes of lead waste illegally dumped in the Zeleny Bor village – locals have little trust in government assurances about safety. 

Belarusian legislation theoretically protects the environment, but enforcement is weak. The available data on water pollution suggest serious contamination from nitrogen, phosphates, and heavy metals. However, authorities provide no details on pollution sources or specific locations, making independent analysis impossible. 

Another looming crisis is the state of Belarus’ wastewater treatment facilities. Many cities in the Bug basin still rely on Soviet-era equipment from the 1980s. These outdated systems no longer effectively filter pollutants. Prior to 2020, EU funding helped modernise wastewater treatment in some cities, such as Brest. But since sanctions halted cooperation, other cities, such as Kobrin, have been left with crumbling infrastructure. If wastewater treatment facilities fail, raw sewage could spill into the Bug, contaminating the Vistula, which is a tributary of the Baltic Sea. 

Can politics and nature coexist? 

While Belarus restricts environmental transparency and Poland prioritises border security, the Bug River silently bears the consequences. History has shown that political tensions push ecological concerns into the background, where they remain until the damage is beyond repair. The failure to cooperate on environmental protection and the militarisation of the border are leaving scars that will last for generations. Deforestation, pollution and habitat destruction are not temporary side effects but permanent losses that will shape the future of this region. As climate change accelerates and biodiversity dwindles, true security is not just about fortified borders, but also about safeguarding ecosystems. 

Elsewhere in the world, rivers like the Canadian Magpie and New Zealand’s Whanganui have been granted legal personhood, allowing them to fight for their right to exist and thrive. The Bug River, despite its ecological significance, has no such protection. It cannot speak for itself, especially when confronted with arguments of national security and political necessity. 

But as the political landscape surrounding the Bug River becomes increasingly fraught, the health of the Bug River is not just a matter of national interest – it is a shared responsibility that transcends borders and divisions. 

This article was produced with the support of Journalismfund Europe. 

Since coming to power in 2019, Kais Saied has tightened his grip on Tunisia’s institutions and rolled back democratic reforms linked to the Arab Spring. His popularity feeds on resentment against sub-Saharan migrants, elites, and foreign interference. The EU, eager to curb migration and develop green energy, is turning a blind eye to his abuses.  

Tunisia is a “privileged partner” of the European Union, which has supported efforts to transform the country’s political system and stabilise its economy since the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. Just over a year ago, the two concluded an Association Agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding to, among other things, ensure the stability of the Tunisian economy, facilitate Tunisia’s energy transition, and manage migration flows. 

However, the North African country continues to grapple with severe economic and social problems. Despite the economy doing better this year than in 2023 – partly thanks to the rebound in tourism – unemployment currently stands at 16 per cent, with a disproportionate effect on women and young people, public debt is growing, and inflation is above 9 per cent. Purchasing power has declined because salaries have remained stagnant while prices have soared: the minimum wage is around 110 euros. 

These problems are amplified by a complex political situation. President Kais Saied was reelected on 6 October following a highly controversial presidential election in which voter turnout was just 28 per cent (with only 6 per cent of young people voting). The newly re-elected president has been pursuing populist and nationalistic policies, issuing decrees with little or no involvement from advisors. This hasn’t helped his image on the international stage.  

“He is anti-politics,” said Sami Ben Abderrahmane, a retired judge. “The people believe in him as if he were a prophet. You cannot change the electoral law a year before the elections; you cannot change the rules of the game. Economically, there will be no major reforms coming.”   

During his five-year tenure, Saied appointed five different prime ministers, suspended the Parliament in July 2021 after a political stalemate and economic crisis lasting several years, and finally dissolved it in March 2022. The new constitution he introduced grants the president significantly expanded powers while simultaneously weakening the influence of Tunisia’s legislative (parliamentary) and judiciary branches. In addition, three months before the elections were to take place, Saied made changes to the electoral law in order to reduce the role played by political parties. 

The members of the Independent High Authority for Elections of Tunisia (ISIE), the institution in charge of organising elections since 2011, have been appointed directly by Saied since 2022. This has resulted in ISIE only approving three candidates to run in the presidential elections – one of which was Saied. Several candidates have challenged the decision before administrative courts. Three of them, Imed Daimi, Mondher Znaidi, and Abdellatif Mekki, won their appeals, and the court decided to reinstate them as candidates.  

However, on 1 September, ISIE rejected the binding court ruling and refused to implement it. Thus, the only candidates in the running on election day were Saied, Ayachi Zammel – who was sentenced to 12 years in prison a few weeks prior to the elections after being found guilty on several charges – and Zouhair Maghzaoui, who only received 1.97 per cent of the vote. 

These actions clearly violate the separation of powers enshrined in the democratic constitution of 2014. Indeed, critics see these measures as threatening the democratic gains made since the Tunisian revolution and the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime in 2011, accusing Saied of an “authoritarian drift”, a “constitutional coup”, a “self-coup” or a “military-backed coup”.  

“We are returning to the dictatorial regime of the Ben Ali period, but in a much more difficult world and with a dictator who, unlike his predecessor, plays, at least rhetorically, with nationalistic, populist, and anti-colonialist ideas,” says the Spanish philosopher and writer Santiago Alba. “He is a kind of sad Gaddafi.”   

The demolition of democracy 

Unlike its neighbouring Arab countries, which also experienced massive popular uprisings in 2011, Tunisia did not immediately revert to authoritarianism or descend into civil war.  

“The impression that things were better before (under Ben Ali) goes beyond culture,” says Tunisian writer Hatem Nafti. “There was a kind of tacit agreement: secure a minimum living standard for a large part of the population in exchange for freedom. Today, the economic situation has deteriorated significantly and the number of people who are able to enjoy freedom is decreasing.”  

Many foreign observers and some of Tunisia’s political elites have celebrated the country as the Arab world’s only democracy. President Saied’s expansion of presidential powers has shaken the political system, calling into question the future of Tunisian democracy but also highlighting deep-rooted cracks in the country’s democratic framework. 

“The problem is that we knew from the get-go that he doesn’t believe in debate,” says Mustapha Tlili, a professor of modern history and civil society activist, who is a former leader of the Tunisian Human Rights League. “He doesn’t believe in experts. He doesn’t believe in elites – quite the contrary. He continues to demonise everyone, the power elites, experts, political parties, organisations, human rights associations, etcetera. He wants to demonise everyone.”

Nevertheless, after years of irritation with the country’s political elites, many Tunisians welcomed the president’s decisions. They see them as part of the fight against corruption and foreign interference. This popular support could be seen at the polls, where most of the people willing to speak to the press praised Saied for jailing members of the opposition, whom they described as “terrorists”, “corrupt”, or “doing deals with other countries”. It’s a populist discourse focused on eradicating corruption, backroom deals, and political conspiracies. 

Saied sells slogans such as “I am with the poor”, “I like the poor”, and “The rich are corrupting our neighbourhoods.” “He has created a dichotomy in which there is only good and evil; he represents good, and the others are all evil,” Tlili laments. “Those who are not with him are conspiring with foreigners and don’t want to defend the nation. He is under the impression that he is leading a war of national liberation, and he reiterates that belief whenever he appears on television or on the radio.”  

Dissenting voices in the country are being repressed, with journalists, lawyers, politicians, activists, dissidents, and human rights defenders thrown in prison. To this end, over the past two years Saied has used a controversial law that criminalises the dissemination of “false information”. Amnesty International has described Decree 54, which severely limits freedom of expression, as one of the harshest measures passed in Tunisia in over a decade. 

A young Tunisian artist, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of being arrested (a member of his family has been in prison for several months due to his social media posts), is convinced that “this regime cannot last.” He appeared downhearted during his interview with the Green European Journal, which took place the day after the elections. “The president wants people to believe that the West, colonisation, and the European Union are to blame for everything.” 

It is true that, despite criticism, discontent, and several demonstrations during three years of repression, attempts to unseat Saied have been unsuccessful. “Fear is not the only reason, but it helps reduce opposition and even people’s degree of politicisation,” Nafti said. “One chapter of my book is entitled ‘The Twilight of Politics’. The splintering of the opposition and the fact that the regime has created its own laws, systematically disregarding checks and balances, also play a role.” 

Nafti, author of Our Friend Kais Saied (Riveneuve, 2024) and a member of the Tunisian Observatory of Populism, resides in Paris and has not travelled to Tunisia since February 2023. “Several lawyers have advised me not to return to Tunisia because I risk being imprisoned. There are people in prison on charges that are much vaguer than the ones brought against me. I received serious death threats and discovered that I was being followed outside my home in Paris.”   

When asked about Saied’s personality, he replied: “It took me more than two books to describe him. If I had to sum him up in one sentence, I would say that he is someone who is out to get revenge on the elites who never took him seriously – especially because he never received a doctorate – and who believes himself to be tasked with an almost messianic mission. Opposing him is blasphemy.” 

Tunisia on the international stage 

This situation has implications for the broader international community and for Tunisia’s relationship with Europe. Until the constitutional change in 2022, Tunisia’s main benefactors were the US, as well as the EU and its member states, which provided the country with more than 1.3 billion dollars in economic assistance each year. The US has withdrawn its aid and reprimanded Saied for his actions. Europe, for its part, has focused more on Tunisia’s ability to curb the flow of migrants than on advancing democracy in the country. Thus, at the same time as the EU was withdrawing its financial aid, it was sending funds to strengthen the border police. 

Currently, Tunisia’s main allies are Algeria and Libya, especially in terms of energy supply. For financial resources, it looks to Saudi Arabia, as well as some European countries, such as Italy, with whom it has also signed a deal to fight illegal migration. Kuwait also reaffirmed its “support for the decisions of President Kais Saied and its confidence in his ability to overcome the challenges that the country is facing and achieve the aspirations of the Tunisian people.” 

Migration pact with Europe 

The plight of migrants in Tunisia took a tragic turn in 2023. Under pressure from the Italian government of Georgia Meloni, the EU signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisia in July 2023 aimed at “addressing the migration crisis in an integrated manner.” In a presidential statement made in February of that same year, Saied claimed that “the undeclared goal of sub-Saharan Africans is to change the demographic composition of Tunisia.”  

The speech, and in particular, the president’s racist comments and his espousal of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory – which followed months of racist social media campaigns by the regime – had immediate repercussions. Citizen mobs assaulted and robbed sub-Saharan Africans while the police carried out raids and arrests. This climate of terror led to an influx of migrants to Sfax, a coastal city in southern Tunisia and the departure point for the Italian island of Lampedusa. 

Several makeshift camps have now been set up in olive groves a few kilometres from Sfax, where sub-Saharan migrants are enduring unsanitary conditions, biding their time until they can try their luck and embark on the dangerous journey to Italy. They are often detained by the coast guard, who seize all their belongings and imprison them or take them to the Algerian or Libyan desert, where they are left without food or water and where many of them perish. The suffering extends to the local population of Jbeniana and El Amra, who live under constant threat of violence and conflict, both from the police and from the migrants themselves. The prevailing insecurity has led to widespread protests from locals, who are frustrated with the mishandling of migration in the region. 

Tunisia’s treatment of migrants is in breach of the Memorandum of Understanding with Europe, which states that the migration approach “shall be based on respect for human rights”. For this reason, Amnesty International said in a letter to the European Council: “To remain true to their human rights commitments, the EU and its Member States should reconsider their approach to cooperation with Tunisia, and take steps to address the systematic attacks on the rule of law and separation of powers in the country, the crackdown on rights and freedoms, and the violence targeting Black African asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants in the country.” 

In a context of growing xenophobia, Tunisia effectively acts as a border agent for the EU, with Europe providing the country with financial support so that it may secure the equipment, training, and technical support necessary for migration control. This role is a key pillar of the Memorandum, with an initial 105 million euros allocated for search and rescue vessels, jeeps, radars, drones and other types of patrol equipment. 

The implementation of these controls has led to a significant reduction in migrant arrivals to Europe, down by more than 80 per cent compared to 2023. According to Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesperson for FTDES, it comes as “the Tunisian authorities have mobilised a large number of human resources, both on land and at sea, to minimise the number of Tunisians migrating to European territories. Europeans are very satisfied, that is to say, they evaluate or measure success quantitatively by the number of migrants arriving in Europe.” 

Additionally, the President has agreed to allow the return and readmission of Tunisian nationals with irregular status from the European Union, and to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of irregular migrants in Tunisia to their home countries, with assistance from the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR. Some of these migrants are Tunisian citizens fleeing the country’s repressive policies, but others come from faraway places such as Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.  

“The Tunisian authorities do not provide figures on deportations, but these happen at Tabarka airport, a region bordering Algeria,” Ben Amor explains. “It’s a calm place; there is no activity, there are no planes except for the planes carrying the deportees. Which means there are no witnesses to the deportations. 

“Therefore, Europe has essentially green-lit violations against migrants in Tunisia. The European Union turns a blind eye to what is happening in Tunisia, with cautious statements that fail to criticise the abuse of human rights. They fall short of addressing the situation in Tunisia, so the European Union is legitimising what is happening there. The UN rapporteurs, for example, are more direct and have clearer messages.”  

Green strategy 

Another key area of European interest in Tunisia is its potential for green energy development. Aware of Tunisia’s renewable energy potential, the European Union has signed the Green Energy Transition Memorandum, which outlines a strategy to enhance sustainable growth and job creation in the area. This partnership will help strengthen the security of energy supply and provide citizens and businesses with low-carbon energy at competitive prices. 

In addition, within the framework of the Connecting Europe Facility, the EU has committed 307.6 million euros for the development of ELMED, a power line allowing Tunisia and Italy to trade low-cost renewable electricity, and up to 150 million euros for the construction of Medusa, a submarine cable that will use fibre optic technology to connect 11 countries around the Mediterranean. These projects will combine grants from the EU budget and loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB). This partnership will also address the instruments and regulations needed to enable Tunisia to export renewable energy and other products to the EU in view of the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). 

Obviously, the European Union will be closely monitoring developments in Tunisia. After the elections and despite the adverse outlook, Tunisians express a certain optimism that the situation can change.  

“There are two interpretations or visions of what is happening: some say that the regime of Kais Saied is merely a phase, that such periods are a necessary part of the democratic learning process; others say it signals the end of the Revolution and see it as a step backwards,” says a cartoonist known as Z, author of the blog Debatunisie and a critic of the regime. “As an optimist, I’d rather embrace the first view.”  

What do we do with our borders? The right-wing shift in the European political climate in recent years has meant a higher degree of securitisation. At the same time, some are calling for border controls to be reduced or even abolished. Perhaps the answer lies in a change of perspective; a new outlook free from the shackles of capitalism and inspired by degrowth.

Recent national and European elections have marked a shift to the right in European politics. While the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) failed to win a majority in France’s parliamentary election, it will still be the most represented party in the French Parliament. In other European countries, such as Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands, radical right forces have formed coalition governments.

One of the driving factors behind the success of right-wing forces has been their framing of migration as a key security issue. In the run-up to the European elections, a survey in Germany found that 41 per cent of the population considers refugees, immigration, asylum politics, and integration as the most important problem for the European Union. This widespread perception of out-of-control immigration to the EU has also led once-moderate political forces to promise stricter border enforcement and rapid deportations, in an (often unsuccessful) attempt to take votes away from the far right.

In December 2023, France passed a controversial bill toughening its immigration policies, while in March this year, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) expressed its support for Rwanda-style deportation deals with non-EU countries. Moreover, In April, the EU adopted the new Asylum and Migration Pact after eight long years of negotiations; and shortly before the European elections, Brussels signed a new agreement to contain immigration from Lebanon.    

Right-wing narratives have also linked migration to climate change. While far-right forces are known for their scepticism towards anthropogenic climate change, they have progressively shifted away from pure denialism towards instrumentalising global warming and ecological crises for political purposes. These narratives advocate for tighter border protection by casting migrants as responsible for environmental degradation and framing climate-induced migration as a security threat.

Ahead of the 2019 European elections, the Rassemblement National’s Jordan Bardella stated that “borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them that we will save the planet.”

This emergent discourse of “ecobordering” draws on (neo-)colonial, racialised, and neo-Malthusian logics to present borders as environmental protection and climate solutions. As researchers Joe Turner and Dan Bailey explain, the aspiration behind ecobordering is to “obscure the primary driving causes of the ecological crisis in the entrenched production and consumption practices of Global North economies”, blaming ecological degradation in the Global South instead.

Through the divisive strategy of scapegoating “the other”, these narratives seek to hide responsibilities for a long history of colonialism, exploitation and violence that extend into the present.    

Inaction and militarisation

In recent years, the degrowth movement has increasingly taken issue with global power dynamics and structural drivers of inequality. There is a growing understanding that if degrowth does not converge with demands from the Global South, it risks turning into an “inward-looking, provincial, localised, and eventually exclusive project” that perpetuates the “imperial mode of living” of the Global North.

However, degrowth has yet to develop a comprehensive border perspective that goes beyond local solutions like open localism. Such a perspective must take into account the capitalist system’s fundamental need for borders, as well as the rise of ecobordering narratives.    

In the current capitalist system, the “deep hegemony of borders” is perceived as common sense across a wide spectrum of political actors. In Europe, for example, liberal and progressive actors have justified increased border protection with the need to protect and promote “our European way of life”.

If it wants to challenge the capitalist system of global exploitation, degrowth needs to call into question the border apparatus through which this system protects and perpetuates itself.

The mainstreaming of securitisation discourses has also led to higher spending in the border security and surveillance industry. In 1990, there were no fences at the external borders of the EU/Schengen area. In 2014, the length of border fences was 315 km. By 2022, it was 2,048 km – 13 per cent of the EU’s external land borders. 

A degrowth border perspective should be built on the acknowledgement of historic and present-day responsibilities, as well as principles of solidarity and humanity.

Reflecting this shift in border policies, the budget for the European border and coast guard agency Frontex rose by 2,763 per cent between 2005 and 2020. From 2021-2027, the agency will be provided with 5.6 billion euros – a 194 per cent increase compared to the previous budgetary cycle. Rich countries currently spend 2.3 times more money on border securitisation than on climate finance.

Given that one of the aims of degrowth is to downsize those branches of the economy that are socially and ecologically harmful, border enforcement needs to be put under the spotlight. Indeed, besides its huge human costs, the border security industry has been found to be “profiteering from climate change”. While prospects of climate-induced migration have played a role in border securitisation, another important factor is the nexus between fossil fuel firms and border policing: the same private industries that provide border protection to rich countries also offer their services to the oil industry. This shows how “climate inaction and militarised responses to its consequences increasingly work hand in hand.”    

Degrowth and freedom of movement

So far, degrowth has engaged only marginally with the topic of borders and (im-)migration. In his book Degrowth (2018), Giorgos Kallis dedicates a small section to the issue, dismantling the claim by American economist Herman Daly that immigration poses a threat to a steady-state (or post-growth) economy. ‘

According to Daly, the population growth associated with migration inflows leads to more economic growth. Daly draws on American ecologist Garett Hardins’ “lifeboat ethics”, which claims that each state, similarly to a boat, can only take a certain number of people before exceeding its social and ecological capacities. Kallis rejects that assumption based, among other things, on the observation that countries are not closed containers whose environmental impacts are confined to their national boundaries. He concludes that there is no ecological case for closed borders and no evidence that immigration poses a risk to degrowth.

At the same time, Kallis warns against understanding degrowth as being in favour of open borders, as such a policy might fundamentally undermine the nation-state. While its role continues to be debated within the degrowth community, the state is still seen by many as an essential actor for a social-ecological transformation. The call for open borders or the slogan “No borders, no nation” has also been criticised from the Left for acting as an “empty provocation” that risks to steer and increase existing fears around the competition for public goods, leading to anti-immigration sentiments and the rise of the far-right. 

Drawing attention to the narrow scope of the ongoing debate around degrowth and borders, German sociologist Miriam Lang argues that it is not enough to simply ask for open borders. According to Lang, such a call must consider and criticise how the “imperial mode of living” of rich countries, its associated North-South relationships, and the dominant understanding of a good life are linked to the overall structural crisis of capitalism and the current climate catastrophe.

This debate shows that degrowth still needs to develop a coherent border perspective as part of its project of deep socioecological transformation. What is clear, however, is that a degrowth case for open borders cannot be based on neoliberal or utilitarian considerations that frame immigration as a solution to demographic decline, ageing populations, or a shortage of skilled labour. Rather, a degrowth border perspective should be built on the acknowledgement of historic and present-day responsibilities, as well as principles of solidarity and humanity.

Concrete proposals could include providing safe passages, revising visa and residence laws, and building necessary social infrastructures. The money currently being spent for the securitisation of borders could be redirected towards socially useful projects to assure that everyone has the right to decent housing and the means to adapt to the consequences of climate change.

Global freedom of movement entails the right to move, but also the right to remain – that is, the assurance that one’s livelihood is not endangered by the advance of the capitalist system and the economic growth of rich countries. A degrowth border perspective based on these principles can act as a strong counter-proposal to the divisive narrative of ecobordering.

The agreement signed in Cairo aims to stop migration flows at a time when Egypt’s dire economic situation, the prolonged civil war in Sudan, and Israel’s indiscriminate destruction of Gaza are making Egypt a point of departure towards Europe for Egyptians and transit migrants alike. Deal after deal, the EU is outsourcing migration control, with little consideration for human rights.

A delegation of five European prime ministers, led by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, signed a 7.4 billion euro deal in Cairo, Egypt, on 17 March. It was timely: the EU is preparing to finalise its New Pact on Migration and Asylum, one that will see Egypt added to the list of countries serving as fundamental assets of Europe’s border offshoring framework. 

In recent years, the different crises affecting the Middle East and East Africa have caused a doubling in the number of migrants fleeing from Egypt. The surge in arrivals onto Italian shores back in 2022 led the EU Commission to launch the first phase of an 80 million euro border management programme with Egypt. Since then, the EU’s efforts to contain migration from the North African country have only intensified.  

On 23 January, Josep Borrell and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry shook hands in Brussels to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Egypt. In October 2023, Egyptian officials had visited the headquarters of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. Shortly after, as the Israeli offensive in Gaza forced Palestinians to escape into the south of the Strip near the border with Egypt, Ursula von der Leyen stressed the need to “support Egypt through the current crisis and establish a firm [migration control] partnership.”  

Since then, scant official details have been released, until the deal was sealed on 17 March. In the past weeks, human rights groups had warned that by signing an agreement with Egypt the EU would “risk complicity in abuses” towards migrants, and that the New Pact on Migration and Asylum – which is complemented by similar border control deals with other third countries – will likely “set back European asylum law for decades to come”. 

Rising pressure 

With a population of around 109 million, Egypt is the largest country in North Africa and the Middle East. Political unrest and deep economic woes over the past decade resulted in record annual inflation of 39.7 per cent in August last year. Although this is projected to drop to 26.7 per cent this year, Egypt’s inflation is expected to remain the highest in the region until 2028. 

The economic crisis has pushed tens of thousands of Egyptians to seek opportunities in Europe. In 2022, 21,753 Egyptians made it into the Union. According to the International Organization for Migration, that made Egypt the top source country for Europe-bound migrants. This is a new phenomenon, according to the Egyptian demographer Ayman Zohry. “We do not have an established trend of migration from Egypt to Europe [as we do from] the Maghreb countries”, he says. Instead, Egypt has historically been known as a major hub for transit migrants.   

Egypt currently hosts about 9 million migrants, “most of them transit migrants that are stuck here, wanting to go to Europe”, according to Zohry. Most of these are Sudanese who fled the country as it descended into civil war in April 2023. But Egypt is also a transit hub for people fleeing from the Horn of Africa and, more recently, the war in Gaza.  

The latest reports from humanitarian organisations such as UNRWA claim that at least 1.7 million people in Gaza have been internally displaced since the start of the Israeli offensive. That equates to more than 80 per cent of the population. Most of them fled to Rafah, the southern area of the Gaza Strip close to the border with Egypt, which Israel had designated a “safe zone”. However, Israel’s repeated threats of a land invasion caused many Gazans who had relocated to Rafah to attempt to cross into Egypt. That prompted Egypt to start building a 21-square-kilometer “walled enclosure” next to the border that would accommodate more than 100,000 people in the event that Israel attacked the south of the Strip. The rising hostilities along Egypt’s border with Israel, coupled with the country’s economic issues, means that “the ability of Egypt to keep these transit migrants is decreasing,” Zohry argues. The EU, however, does not seem eager to welcome them. 

Cash for containing departures 

Von der Leyen announced in a letter to EU leaders in December that the Union’s top priority in the creation of the new migration and asylum framework was the strengthening of the bloc’s external borders. With regards to Egypt, the two main ways in which the partnership will be implemented are by enhancing surveillance capacity on both the Mediterranean coast of Egypt and its border with Libya, and by cooperating over the return of “irregular” migrants to their home countries.  

Human Rights Watch has led the efforts in denouncing the EU’s strategic partnership with Egypt. In a letter to the Commission’s president, it warned of Egypt’s hostile environment for migrants and refugees. Claudio Francavilla, Human Rights Watch’s EU advocacy associate director, told the Green European Journal that “for years, [the organisation] has documented a wide range of abuses by Egyptian authorities and civilians against Black African migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, including arbitrary detention and physical abuse, sexual violence, racism, [and] lack of access to basic health and education services.” He highlights how, for example, Egypt has created barriers to protection for Sudanese trying to flee the conflict, and committed refoulement by forcibly returning Eritreans without assessing their asylum claims. 

However, Egyptians themselves could be among the worst affected by the EU partnership. “Providing a highly abusive government with dual-use surveillance technology and training on how to use it heightens the risk that it may be used for internal surveillance and targeting of opponents,” says Francavilla. The 2022 deal, according to Human Rights Watch, has “contributed to pervasive corruption and mismanagement by the Egyptian government, which in turn has led to a dire economic situation” and produced conditions that are driving Egyptians to leave. The letter from the rights group also claims that instead of “calling out the serious abuses by the Egyptian government, European governments and institutions have decided to reward Egypt’s leaders.”  

Egyptians themselves could be among the worst affected by the EU partnership.

These concerns, Francavilla argues, are not limited to the Egypt case. “The list [of EU migrant deals with third countries] is unfortunately likely to grow, as EU governments and institutions insist on concluding ‘cash for containing departures’ deals, with little if any regard for the migrants’ and asylum seekers’ fate.” He adds that it will limit progress on human rights and democracy in countries of origin and transit more broadly.   

Outsourcing is the new normal 

Over the past decade, efforts by EU member states to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from reaching their borders have intensified, according to Sara Prestianni and Elena Bizzi from EuroMed Rights, a network of human rights groups. “One strategy to reach this goal [is to fund] programs for third countries’ coast guards and border police, and striking untransparent deals with undemocratic countries and authoritarian regimes,” they say. 

Libya has served as a laboratory for border externalisation practices in which the EU’s responsibility for handling migration is outsourced. Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011 culminated in a state of semi-anarchy, and migrants left for Europe in increasing numbers. This prompted the EU to launch Operation Sophia in concert with the Fayez El-Sarraj-led Government of National Accord, in which a naval force was sent to Libya to neutralise attempts by migrants to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.  

Admiral Enrico Credendino, commander of Operation Sophia, told journalists in 2017 that the deal with El-Sarraj was intended to “create a Libyan system capable of stopping migrants before they reach international waters”. This would absolve the EU of legal responsibility on pushbacks, he added. “As a result, it will no longer be considered a push-back because it will be the Libyans who will be rescuing the migrants and doing whatever they consider appropriate with the migrants.” 

Since the Libyan experiment, the EU has struck numerous other deals with third countries to keep migrants and refugees far from European borders. First came the EU-Turkey deal in 2016, which led to the rise of shootings and beatings of Syrian asylum seekers by Turkish guards.  

Then came funding to Morocco, such as the 500 million euros agreed in the wake of the Melilla massacre in 2022, when Spanish and Moroccan border guards shot rubber bullets and teargas at some 1,700 migrants and asylum seekers kettled into a small holding yard on the Morocco-Melilla border, causing a stampede that, according to some estimates, left at least 37 migrants dead. Since the package was announced, organisations such as Walking Borders claim to have witnessed “increasingly militarised and violent migratory controls against migrants” as well as “an increase in the mortality rates of the boats that have left [Morocco]”.  

In July 2023, Tunisia and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding on “a strategic and global partnership” that echoes the deal with Egypt. In the months since, EuroMed Rights claims to have recorded multiple forms of abuse by Tunisian authorities against sub-Saharan migrants, including physical violence, firearms use, engine removal and boat collisions. “These kinds of externalisation policies and deals push people on the move to find other, more dangerous migratory routes to escape border controls, thus leading to more violence and deaths,” EuroMed Rights says. “According to official data, since 2014, almost 30,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe.” But the real number, the group says, is likely much higher.  

EuroMed Rights is afraid that the next EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will “maintain the dangerous concept of ‘safe third countries’ to enable Member States to return asylum seekers despite the risk of human rights violations.” In fact, besides Egypt’s onboarding as a strategic partner, the Pact also seeks to prevent migration flows coming from other strategic areas.  

As for the Balkans, Albania has agreed to host two migrant processing centres on its territory that will be run by Italy, and Bosnia and Herzegovina is set to receive 6.4 million euros in funding for a project that will focus on improving integrated border management. Meanwhile, the EU and Spain have agreed to pay Mauritania’s government 210 million euros to prevent transit migrants departing the West African country towards Europe. 

The proliferation of these offshoring deals led civil society organisations and human rights groups such as EuroMed Rights to cooperatively launch the campaign #NotThisPact in December 2023. More recently, on 14 February 2024, 81 civil society organisations called on MEPs to reject the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum at the EU Parliament’s Justice Committee (LIBE) vote. 

Migrants as a security threat 

The idea for a new Pact on migration first took root almost four years ago following von der Leyen’s claim in September 2020 that “migration is complex. The old system no longer works”. It is expected to see the light before the EU elections in June. This new Pact will differ from the previous one in three fundamental ways. First, border procedures to deal with asylum requests will be accelerated; second, member states will jointly introduce shared-responsibility mechanisms; and third, they will develop mechanisms for regulating “crises”. 

The Pact’s drafts contain no explicit references to border externalisation, says Alberto Neidhardt, senior policy analyst at the European Policy Center. “However, you could make the argument that in order to make the Pact sustainable, the number of arrivals will have to be kept low, and member states will, for that reason, seek to outsource responsibility to third countries.”  

The change in EU migration policy reflects a broader shift to the right among European governments.

The rhetoric used by von der Leyen to explain the motives for the “comprehensive partnerships” between EU member states and non-members has been cause for concern. In a letter, she wrote: “Those who have no right to come to Europe must know they will not be allowed to stay.” EuroMed Rights has said that the wording of the letter securitises the movement of people. “Migrants are treated as a security threat, with a security/military approach rather than a protection approach.” 

This wording is not accidental, the group points out: “It is important to remember that these policies are implemented by member states, with the support of tech and security companies.” A Cambridge University investigation in 2018 found that security advisory groups are “closely linked to companies and institutions that win EU-funded security projects”. Neidhardt argues that “to implement all of these new reforms you need a lot of funding. These lobbies or security companies will likely try to benefit from increased budgeting for border management purposes following the Pact.” Frontex, the largest EU agency, saw its budget skyrocket from 142 million euros in 2015 to 754 million euros in 2022.  

Neidhardt is not surprised by the securitisation of EU migration policy and the growth of security agencies and lobbies. “I think it would have been unrealistic to expect policymakers to come up with reforms protective of the right to asylum and protection in Europe. That is just not the political environment nor the age in which we live.”  

Human Rights Watch’s Francavilla echoes this, arguing that the change in EU migration policy reflects a broader shift to the right among European governments. “The EU is de facto implementing the migration policies sought by the far right, contributing to legitimising those groups and arguably helping them to succeed. We have argued that the EU’s migration obsession is shaking the credibility of the bloc’s commitment to its human rights obligations, affecting, in turn, the EU’s credibility as a principled international player.” 

Back in Egypt, demography experts know that the EU’s so-called new vision is not the answer. “Migration flows are like water flows, you cannot stop them,” Zohry states. “Even if you try to build fences, migrants fleeing from hardship will not stop trying to reach their destination.”