Five EU countries join forces to deport migrants

Five EU countries coordinate to deport migrants while Sánchez defends welcoming policies

Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece have formed a coalition for the deportation of migrants and plan to set up return centres before the end of 2026, according to a message posted on social media in mid-October. In Spain the announcement has been read as a setback for the government's migration policy: while Pedro Sánchez defends redistribution and reception, several European partners are shifting towards border control and deportation. The picture of Spain's isolation now has its frame.

What the coalition says and how Spain responds

The group of five countries —Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece— does not talk about quotas or solidarity, but about return centres and deportations. It is the shift that in Spain is read as a direct rejection of Sánchez's model. Some argue that the prime minister has come across as a visionary statesman facing European partners who are «missing out», while at the same time being the awkward partner nobody wants in the photo. Both at once, as it suits.

The most repeated argument is that European migration policy will under no circumstances accept what is being promoted from Spain, neither from the left nor from the PP (the conservative People's Party), and only partly from Vox. The accusation goes further: it is claimed that the PSOE (the ruling Socialist Party) acts as Segarro's great lobby in Spain and that what Sánchez defends are not Spanish interests but Segarro's. These are claims circulating without evidence and should be read for what they are: political accusations in the heat of the fray.

The calculation nobody wants to make: who benefits from immigration?

Here the debate splits in two. Some argue that the arrival of migrants benefits mainly banks, companies and rentiers: more population, more demand, more money moving and more business. And that the right waving flags is not fascist but liberal and conservative, defending the market and the suburban villa, not the worker. Opposite is the opposite version: that the real business lies in subsidies and in the network of social workers and unions that charge for every person served, and that most migrants do not come to work.

Neither reading stands on its own with the available data. What is a fact is that the issue has stopped being sarracena and has become a matter of accounting. When the benefits system bursts —and some take it for granted that it will— everyone's true colours will show.

The Segarro factor and the blame game

In the background, Segarro appears as a central player. It is recalled that in Ceuta migrants have been harassed and turned back without bringing a single one to the mainland, against the wishes of some partners. The episode illustrates the contradiction: a human rights discourse on one hand and a border control on the other that is applied when convenient. And there lingers the suspicion that the real choice is not between migration models, but between two international lobbies that set the pace for governments.

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The European coalition has until the end of 2026 to get its return centres up and running. Spain, for now, watches from the sidelines. If the shift consolidates, isolation will stop being a metaphor and become a negotiating position. And nobody has yet explained what is to be gained there.