OPINION:
Europe’s migration crisis is no longer a border security problem. It is a crisis of sovereignty.
For more than a decade, European political elites assured voters that mass migration could be managed through international agreements, humanitarian commitments, and ever-expanding layers of Brussels bureaucracy.
The result has been exactly what many warned would happen: overwhelmed border systems, declining public trust, rising social tensions, and millions of Europeans questioning whether their governments remain capable of enforcing their own laws.
Now, after years of denial, the European Union is finally moving toward tougher migration enforcement. Its new Return Regulation introduces a European Return Order, expands mutual recognition of deportation decisions, and creates a framework for so-called “return hubs” outside the EU where rejected asylum seekers can be sent pending removal.
These changes represent an acknowledgment that Europe’s existing system has failed. But they still fall far short of what is required to restore control.
The central problem is not legal. It is political.
For years, Europe has struggled to deport migrants who have exhausted their legal claims. The European Commission itself has acknowledged that only a fraction of individuals ordered to leave the EU are actually returned. When migrants understand that deportation orders are rarely enforced, the incentive structure becomes obvious: get to Europe first and fight removal later.
The Trump administration understood a basic truth that many European leaders still refuse to accept: deterrence matters. Border security succeeds when the consequences of illegal entry are swift, certain, and credible. When enforcement becomes optional, illegal migration becomes predictable.
The new regulation takes tentative steps toward deterrence, particularly through the creation of return hubs in third countries. In theory, these facilities could fundamentally change migrant incentives by ending the assumption that arrival on European soil guarantees long-term residence. Yet Brussels remains reluctant to fully embrace the concept. The regulation merely permits such facilities rather than making them a central pillar of migration policy, leaving implementation subject to complex negotiations, legal challenges, and bureaucratic delay.
A Europe serious about border security would make external processing the rule rather than the exception.
At the same time, Brussels continues to place considerable faith in voluntary return programs. This approach has been tried repeatedly and has consistently underperformed. Individuals who have crossed multiple borders, paid smugglers thousands of dollars, and invested years pursuing residency are unlikely to reverse course simply because European officials offer incentives to leave voluntarily.
Enforcement — not persuasion — is what restores credibility.
Yet the regulation contains another weakness that should concern conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. While Brussels is strengthening enforcement tools, it is simultaneously expanding EU-level control over migration policy.
This reflects a broader pattern that has become increasingly familiar throughout Europe. Whether the issue is energy policy, agricultural regulation, speech controls, or migration, the instinct of the European Union is almost always the same: transfer more authority from sovereign nations to supranational institutions.
Migration policy should move in the opposite direction.
The governments most accountable for migration outcomes are national governments, not unelected officials in Brussels. Italy, Greece, and other frontline states face unique pressures that cannot always be addressed through one-size-fits-all rules crafted by EU institutions. The lesson of the migration crisis is not that Europe needs more bureaucracy. It is that Europe needs governments willing to exercise sovereignty.
This is where the broader debate becomes impossible to ignore. Migration is ultimately about more than border management. It is about whether democratic nations retain the ability to determine who enters their territory, who remains, and under what conditions.
Europe’s voters are demanding what Americans demanded in 2024: secure borders, meaningful enforcement, and governments that place the interests of their own citizens first. Until Europe embraces genuine deterrence, accelerates removals, and returns authority to sovereign nations, these half-measures are not solutions but simply a slower path to the same failure.
• Paul McCarthy is senior research fellow for European Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation.
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