What is a decade enough for?
In a decade, a baby grows into a school-age kid. An adult’s mature vision of the world, including his or her political sympathies, can change over a decade, in response to the rapidly changing world and due to personal circumstances. In a decade, a political party can emerge from nowhere and, after a few years of moderate support, disappear into thin air.
As far as Europe concerned, a decade has proved to be enough for the ruling elite in Brussels to establish new principles regading free speech and political correctness which together resulted in the creation of a cordon sanitaire – an unprecedented in EU’s history sanction to push to the background and silence certain political groups in the European Parliament labelled as ’far-right’.
In Europe, a decade has been long enough for a total of dozens of millions of non-EU citizens to enter the EU illegally, without any sanctions or consequences. And, sadly, a decade has not been enough for the EU’s decision-making elite, responsible for the mass migration crisis in 2015, to step down and be replaced by pragmatic politicians. Partly due to the fact that the same politicians are running the EU today as ten years ago, the migration policy in Brussels has hardly changed over the last ten years.
In 2025, however, the EU policy makers have been forced to revise the EU’s migration policy, mostly due to some internal factors. These are the same people who, in 2023, were overjoyed to adopt the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum.
By ’internal factors’ we mean the definite surge of the far-right throughout Europe, in countries such as the Netherlands, Austria, France, Germany, Italy and others. It is very likely that this very shift has resulted in a new approach by the European Commission revealed on 11 March by Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner and Executive Vice-President of the Commission for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen
The European Commission has proposed to establish a ’Common European System for Returns with swifter, simpler and more effective return procedures across the EU.’, Brunner and Virkkunen explained, with reference to the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum which set out a comprehensive approach on migration. According to the Commission’s data, in 2023, over 480,000 people were ordered to leave the EU – but only one in five actually did so…
’Return is a key pillar of the Pact on Migration and Asylum – without a credible, effective return policy, we cannot have a comprehensive and trustworthy migration system. With the new proposal, we are establishing a common EU return system, ensuring consistent rules across all Member States.’, Virkkunen said.
If we are not aware of her political affiliation and we do not know that she is a politician of the European People’s Party, we could easily believe that she is playing from the Patriots’ playbook and has just accidentally stepped into hostile territory without even noticing it…
However, we must point out that it is not a sensual delusion that tells us this, but the facts: the Commission has indeed picked up the playbook of the Patriots stigmatised as far-right and subjected to a cordon sanitaire, and has begun to step up against migration – a problem it could no longer ignore – through ideas borrowed from that ’dirty’ playbook. It took ten years, two European and a number of national elections to take this step, but it was finally taken. It has took a long time for them to arrive at reality. Never too late.
If taking a brief look at the EC’s proposal, what is striking is that two of its main elements, namely that Member States can enforce stricter and much more precise rules against illegal migrants, including detention and their forced return, and the creation of third-country return hubs for illegal migrants, are remarkably similar to some of the proposals raised earlier by far-right political parties such as the German AfD. This is particularly noteworthy considering the witchhunt the EU mainstream has undertaken over the party’s so-called ’remigration’ campaign or the return hub in Albania initiated by Georgia Meloni.
When asked about the similarities between the proposals of their own and that of the far-right, Brunner and Virkkunen cut short the discussion by acknowledging these similarities, while adding that their concept is totally different from that of the far right and that their project is ’legally founded’. What exactly this latter remark means was not specified.
As far as the future development of European policy is concerned, one cannot help but wonder that the proposals of the isolated AfD to curb migration, and their migration policy, have now been presented in a presentable format, in an EU-level plan. The answer to the question of why this happened is far from complicated: the European mainstream could have come to the conclusion that acting from the playbook of the far-right might be the only possible way to keep power and hold off the far-right.
There is definitely a reason to moralise on whether it is a hypocracy on the part of the Commission to put forward this new proposal on migration, as it is certainly reasonable to show such openly hypocratic behaviour, but at the same time, it is also worth rejoicing over the other side of the coin: the new rules will give Member States the necessary tools to make return more efficient. ’Member States will be equipped with reinforced rules to locate returnees, with the possibility to request a financial guarantee, regular reporting or to reside in a place designated by national authorities.’, the official statement of the Commission says.
If the EU could really manage to effectively tackle the issue of return, the bloc could be rid of a problem that has been piling up for years and has become ever more acute. At the same time, the ruling elite in Brussels must make up a perfect lie to the paradox that this major shift in approach to migration – hopefully, a real success story for the EU as a whole –, was possible thanks to the ideas of parties that have been sanctioned by a cordon sanitaire.
So it is definitely worth continuing to keep an eye on the decision-making processes in Brussels, in particular the approval of the new system for returns, as it is not only a really valuable package of measures, but it also offers excellent entertainment as the developments clearly unmask the good old European hypocracy.
