Monitoring is essential to ensuring that return procedures uphold Europe’s human rights commitments and remain accountable to public scrutiny. The FAiR Policy Brief examines how fundamental rights monitoring operates within the EU’s return systems and proposes ways to enhance its action.
Under the EU Return Directive, Member States must monitor forced return operations to safeguard migrants’ rights. With the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and the proposed EU Return Regulation, the scope and role of monitoring are expected to expand significantly — making this an opportune moment to address existing legal and operational gaps.
Key Findings:
- Positive impact of monitoring: Fundamental rights monitoring has improved compliance with human rights standards during forced returns, notably in preventing ill-treatment, protecting vulnerable individuals, and ensuring access to medical care.
- Inconsistent implementation across Member States: National monitoring mechanisms vary widely in prerogatives and resources. Some are housed in Ombudsman institutions, others within government bodies or NGOs — leading to uneven access to information, detention sites, and flight monitoring.
- Limited scope of current monitoring: Monitoring covers only forced return operations, leaving assisted voluntary return and reintegration (AVR(R)) programmes, pre-departure administrative detention, and external border operations relatively unchecked despite rights risks.
- Lack of post-return monitoring: Most national mechanisms do not track migrants’ situation after return, weakening compliance with the non-refoulement principle and depriving authorities of valuable country-of-origin data.
