Lock ‘em up: the proposal to amend the EU’s Returns Directive

Steve Peers, Professor of Law, University of Essex

One of the key EU laws regulating migration is the Returns Directive, now nearly ten years old, which regulates the main aspects of irregular migration by non-EU citizens. It requires Member States in principle to issue a return decision to every non-EU citizen not authorised to be on their territory, and to enforce that decision by removing the person concerned. In some cases, irregular migrants should be given a period for voluntary departure, so they won’t be subject to forced removal. Member States are required to issue entry bans to many of those subject to a return decision, but must provide for basic remedies to challenge expulsion. There are also rules on the grounds for detention of irregular migrants and their conditions during detention.

When it was adopted, NGOs supporting migrants believed that the Directive set an inexcusably low standard. However, in practice the CJEU has interpreted the Directive more liberally than some expected. I discussed this in detail in a paper published in 2015, and there have been several more CJEU judgments interpreting the Directive since then: Celaj (discussed here), Affum, Ouhrami, Gnandi and KA. For instance, the case law limits the use of the ordinary criminal law to jail irregular migrants, requiring Member States to use the administrative detention rules in the Directive in most cases. The jurisprudence also establishes a limited right to a hearing for irregular migrants (discussed here), and in some extreme cases provides for a basis to prevent expulsion of irregular migrants, and secure their basic rights to health care in the meantime (as discussed here).

The case law has been sufficiently liberal that in light of the perceived refugee ‘crisis’ of the last three years, it’s the EU Commission and Member States who are now concerned about the law, because in their view it is not stringent enough. This approach was set out in an ‘action plan’ and a recommendation issued by the Commission in 2017, as well as a revised Returns Handbook. They represented a change of tone from the 2014 Commission report on the implementation of the Directive, discussed here.

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