While right-leaning MEPs have hailed the toughening of deportation policies, left-wing lawmakers have called it a "dark chapter for Europe"

Wednesday's vote in the European Parliament on toughening migration rules in the EU has highlighted a major rift between right-wing and left-wing MEPs.

The new measures, which include speeding up the deportation of rejected asylum seekers, were originally proposed by the European Commission last year amid growing public discontent with a continued influx of illegal migrants. The issue has dominated the bloc's political landscape since 2015 when roughly a million people entered the EU.

By 2025, the EU migrant population had reached a record 64.2 million, including around 46.7 million people born outside the bloc, according to a recent Berlin-based study using Eurostat and UN data.

Against this backdrop, right-wing parties advocating tougher policies on migration have been steadily gaining ground in multiple member states, including Germany. The mainstream Christian-Democrats and center-right have had to co-opt some of the rhetoric they had previously eschewed.

The new EU law was passed by 418 votes to 218, with 30 abstentions.

The center-right European People's Party (EPP) joined forces with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN).

Right-wing French MEP Francois-Xavier Bellamy hailed the vote as a "historic step for Europe and proof that change is possible."

By contrast, Alessandro Zan from the Socialists and Democrats group (S&D) described the toughening of immigration laws as a "dark chapter for Europe."

S&D Vice-President Ana Catarina Mendes similarly lamented that "this regulation risks normalizing legally questionable practices that would have been unthinkable in the EU only a few years ago."

If given final approval by member states, the new legislation would grant national authorities more powers to search the homes of illegal migrants and to seize their personal belongings. It also raises the maximum detention period for foreign nationals awaiting deportation from six months to two years, with the possibility of a six-month extension, and an unlimited duration for individuals deemed to pose a security risk.

Moreover, member states would be allowed to open "return hubs" in non-EU countries, where rejected asylum seekers would be transferred if they cannot be returned to their countries of origin.

A number of EU nations, including Denmark, Austria, Greece, Germany and the Netherlands, have been mulling this option for some time.

Even Germany and Sweden, which had previously endorsed open-door migrant policies, have made a U-turn, tightening asylum rules at the national level in recent years.