On June 17, 2026, the European Parliament approved the new so-called Return Regulation with the votes of the conservative and far-right political groups. All that remains is formal adoption by the Council. Under the Regulation, people can be sent against their will to a country they neither know nor have ever set foot in. By any ordinary understanding of the term, this is not a return. It is something much closer to an abduction.

The Regulation introduces a number of restrictive changes in comparison to the previous Return Directive. Bernd Parusel discussed and criticized the draft on this blog in February. The hooligan-style chants of “send them back” that erupted after the vote offered a revealing glimpse of how how deeply migration policy has come to be shaped by resentment and fantasies of violence. Here, I focus on one particular aspect of the Regulation: the euphemistically named “removal of the connection criterion.”

Emptying the Meaning of “Return”

Article 4(3) of the Return Regulation defines what counts as a “country of return”. Under the provision, this may be not only the country of nationality or former habitual residence of a third-country national, but also a country through which they merely passed in transit. More strikingly still, Article 4(3) lit. g provides that a country of return may be any state with which an agreement or arrangement exists under which the person will be admitted. In such cases, the “returnee” need not have any connection to the country in question, nor need they have consented to being transferred there.

No one would understand a “return” to mean the forced transfer to a completely new and unfamiliar country. The very meaning of the word presupposes a movement back to a place where one has been before. Pointing out this contradiction is not a matter of semantics. First, applying the term “return” conceals the profound disregard for human dignity that underlies this rule. This is a Regulation focused on removing people, and the public should not fall for the misnomer. Second, only by calling the measure what it is can we understand how fundamentally it conflicts with basic ideas of liberty.

The new rule of Art. 4(3) lit. g significantly differs from the previous Article 3 of the 2008 Return Directive. There, “return” refers to voluntary departure or forced return either to the country of origin, to a transit country, or to another third country –  provided in the latter case that departure to the third country takes place voluntarily. In a 2020 ruling, the European Court of Justice held that transit alone does not establish the kind of connection required under Article 38(2) of the Asylum Procedures Directive.

The new Regulation not only abandons that more demanding connection requirement but goes significantly further. Article 4(3) lit. g broadens the definition of a “country of return” indefinitely; the only condition is found in Article 17, which governs agreements with third countries concerning the admission of persons. It states that such agreements may only be concluded with countries that respect international human right standards, including the principle of non-refoulement.

“Re”location to an Unknown Place

Indeed, legal debates about transferring people to countries entirely unknown to them have focused primarily on the human rights situation in those countries. This was the central issue in the interim relief granted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) concerning the United Kingdom’s plans to transfer asylum seekers to Rwanda. In a similar case before the U.S. Supreme Court, even Justice Sotomayor’s dissent concentrated on procedural safeguards and the risk of rights violations in the third country.

But before discussing the willingness of third countries to enter into such agreements, or the adequacy of their human rights protections, there is a more fundamental question: Is it acceptable to send people against their will to places with which they have no connection whatsoever? The fact that there is no explicit legal prohibition is a remarkably thin justification. What is at stake here is a core dimension of individual freedom.

One of the earliest milestones in the history of fundamental rights was the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. The principle of habeas corpus – the right to control one’s own body – emerged as a safeguard against arbitrary detention and today remains closely associated with the right to prompt judicial review of imprisonment. The right to control one’s own body is an expression of a basic human freedom: individuals possess authority over their own bodies. Forcibly transporting a person to a place entirely unfamiliar to them, from which they cannot simply leave again, is a serious interference with that freedom. It is not comparable to the deportation to a country of origin or transit. There may be compelling reasons why such removals are objectionable, whether because of the treatment awaiting the individual in the receiving state or because of the ties they have established in the state seeking to remove them. Yet in those situations, the state’s action at least reverses a movement previously undertaken by the individual. There are good reasons to dispute – as the European Court of Justice did in 2020 – that transit alone is sufficient to establish the necessary connection. However, removal to a country where a person has never been, with which they have no biographical, social, or other meaningful link, belongs to a fundamentally different category.

Habeas Corpus

It is a basic freedom to have control over one’s own body, including over the body’s movement. This does not imply a universal right to freedom of movement in the sense that it would permit entry anywhere. It does, however, imply the freedom to move within the options available and not to have one’s whereabouts determined by others. This is reflected in guarantees of freedom of movement within states, in the right to leave any country, and in the strict requirements concerning detention. The fact that no explicit legal guarantee currently prohibits the transfer of individuals to unfamiliar third country does not make such deportation acceptable. The codification of human rights responds to experiences of injustice; therefore, legal rights are subject to gradual development.

The prospect that people who come to Europe seeking protection, and whose asylum applications are rejected, may in future be transferred to any third country is grotesque. The EU is creating a legal framework for what can only be described as state-organized abductions. The stated goal of this policy is to instill fear among migrants and thereby discourage others from seeking protection in Europe in the first place. The power to abduct some people in order to frighten others was adopted to jeers and chants in the European Parliament. Are these the European values?