Fine Gael’s EPP side with the far right to bring an ICE-style detention system to Europe
Fine Gael's EPP side with the far right to bring an ICE-style detention system to Europe - The Labour Party
The EU has reached a deal on a new Returns Regulation, a sweeping overhaul of EU migration enforcement that is comparable to Trump’s ICE. The deal was driven through with the support of a coalition of the right and far-right groups in the Parliament, including Fine Gael’s own European People’s Party.
The Regulation allows for warrantless home raids on private residences and hospitals, deportation to offshore “return hubs” in countries people may have no connection with, and detention of up to two years, including in certain cases for children. Critics, including Amnesty International and the EU’s own Fundamental Rights Agency, have warned that the measures are legally dubious, rights-violating, and echo the worst of Trump-era immigration enforcement.
Progressive groups in the European Parliament have opposed the Regulation, calling it a deal that “tramples fundamental rights and takes migration policy backwards,” passed on the back of “a right to far-right majority.”
Speaking on the announcement of the deal, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin MEP said:
“What we are seeing agreed in Brussels this week is Europe building its own version of ICE. Warrantless home raids. Offshore detention centres. Children locked up. It is a dark day for fundamental rights in the European Union.
“Fine Gael’s group in the European Parliament has once again found common cause with the far right to make this happen. While FG politicians go to Washington every year to lobby for amnesty for undocumented Irish immigrants, their MEPs are back in Brussels voting to lock up migrants in detention centres outside the EU. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
“Make no mistake, this is part of a broader rightward shift in European politics, but also in Irish politics. For months now we have seen the Tánaiste and Taoiseach, as well as other Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil figures, recklessly linking migration and homelessness — dog-whistle politics that has no place in serious public debate.
“There is another way. Spain, under the social-democratic government of Pedro Sánchez, has committed to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants. In so doing they are treating people with dignity, but also growing their economy. Spain now has the fastest-growing economy in the Eurozone, in no small part due to its recognition that Europe’s economy needs migrants. That is what a sensible migration policy looks like.
“Labour and the S&D will always stand against a politics that seeks to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Europe was built on values. We intend to defend them.”