Europe has a Migration and Asylum Pact, return rules, border controls, emergency mechanisms and increasingly loud political arguments. What it does not have is a migration architecture.
The European Commission reported that only 28 per cent of return decisions were executed in 2025. Meanwhile, on June 17 the European Parliament approved new return rules, including the possibility of return hubs outside the Union. After the vote, some MEPs chanted “send them back”.
Europe should be ashamed of that. Not because returns are unnecessary. They are necessary. But a continent with Europe’s history should understand the difference between enforcing the law and turning human beings into political theatre.
A decision that cannot be executed is not an operating capability. And louder demands for deportation do not create the infrastructure needed to carry them out.
Europe is trying to patch a hole in a ship’s hull with duct tape. It may cover the hole for a moment. It does not repair the vessel.
Migration begins long before anyone reaches a European border. It begins where people lose safety, work, stability or a credible future. By the time someone reaches the Mediterranean or the Polish-Belarusian frontier, smugglers may already have taken their savings, and hostile governments may already be using them as instruments of pressure.
Why does Europe wait until that point to begin managing the process?
The sequence must be reversed.
The first contact with the European migration system must take place in the applicant’s country of origin or current residence: Remotely, through diplomatic missions or through authorised teams operating locally. Identity, background, security, qualifications and circumstances are assessed before the person travels.
A candidate applies to the European Union, not to Germany, France or any other preferred destination. A central European executive authority coordinates the assessment and allocates approved applicants according to actual capacity: Employment, housing, education, local infrastructure and integration resources. A person may be assigned to Poland, Spain, Italy or another member state where those conditions can be met.
Only approved candidates proceed to European migration centres outside the EU for final preparation, documentation and organised travel. Those who are refused never need to cross another border merely to discover that Europe will not admit them.
This changes the economics of migration. People no longer need to gamble their savings on smugglers before receiving an administrative decision. Europe determines who enters before they arrive, rather than attempting to reconstruct identities and intentions after an uncontrolled crossing.
Admission must also mean participation. A person arriving legally should enter a prepared environment: A place to live, a route into employment, language instruction and local integration.
Leaving people in collective accommodation, without work, waiting for the next administrative letter is not integration. It is the production of dependency.
The system also needs an executable exit. If an admitted person subsequently violates the conditions of residence and loses that right, a prepared return route must exist. Secure, properly equipped facilities outside the EU, established through agreements with host countries, provide the infrastructure.
Illegal entry follows a separate enforcement procedure. Verified security assessments and alerts are shared across the Union, so that decisions taken before arrival can be acted on at any external border.
Every stage has a defined function: Contact, verification, decision, allocation, preparation, entry, integration and, when required, removal. Each function connects to the next. That is what makes the structure an architecture rather than another collection of regulations.
Europe can change the reality of migration by changing where and when decisions are made. It can replace smuggler-controlled journeys with organised legal arrivals, administrative limbo with prepared integration, and unenforceable decisions with operational capacity.
The question is not whether Europe should “let them in” or “send them back”. The question is whether Europe is prepared to design and operate the entire process.
A pact is not an architecture. A fence is not an architecture. A return hub is not an architecture.
Europe needs the system above them. No more duct tape.
