The European Parliament’s top trade MEP said that, in practice, the new rule allowing the EU Commission to impose tariffs on countries for refusing to take back migrants will be hard to apply. But it still marks a significant political shift.
Benjamin Fox
Countries that fail to take back failed asylum seekers and economic migrants face losing their right to trade tariff-free with the EU, under a new rule adopted by MEPs on Tuesday (28 April).
The vote formed part of the parliament’s overall position on the EU’s tariffs regime, known as the ‘Generalised Scheme of Preferences’ (GSP). A 50-year old programme, GSP has enabled developing countries to export goods to the EU at lower tariff rates.
The decision by MEPs confirms a deal reached in December 2025, which included a ‘re-admission conditionality’ to allow the EU to withdraw trade preferences from countries deemed to be uncooperative on accepting deported citizens from Europe.
The vote is proof to many in Brussels of the new rightwing majorities in the parliament since the 2024 European elections.
“The EPP and other rightwing groups have highjacked the GSP file in an effort to serve their dehumanising anti-migrant agenda,” said Lynne Boylan, an Irish MEP who speaks for the Left group on the file.
However, Bernd Lange, the German centre-left lawmaker who chairs the parliament’s international trade committee, played down the significance of the migrant conditionality rule.
EU governments had “moved considerably to meet parliament’s concerns, creating a balanced system with clear guardrails and a differentiated system for least developed countries,” said Lange in a statement.
“In practice, this conditionality will be very hard to trigger,” he added.
EU officials would have to hold at least one year of negotiations with a country before applying the tariffs measures, and ‘least developed countries’ would face an additional two year delay before tariffs came into effect.
In Africa, for example, all countries classified as ‘least developed’ are eligible for tariff and quota free trade as part of the ‘anything but arms’ agreement. The EU has an economic partnership agreement with South Africa, Kenya and a handful of countries in southern Africa.
