The “era of deportations” has begun in the European Union, according to Charlie Weimers, a Swedish conservative MEP and one of the negotiators of the bloc’s strictest-ever migration law, which was agreed on Monday and marked the most significant shift in the EU’s migration policy in decades.
Speaking to Euronews's Europe Today show, Weimers — who is a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group — said the new rules will lead to a significant change in migration management.
"We're moving from words to actual enforcement of our laws and our borders," he said.
The new law includes home searches to find irregular migrants, longer detention periods and entry bans to prevent them from absconding, and the possibility of building controversial deportation centres, called return hubs, outside Europe.
"Hundreds of thousands of people are going into the shadows every year in Europe and that needs to stop," Weimers said, underlining how nowadays only a small part of migrants with no legal right to remain in Europe actually leave the EU.
