For the first time, the EU has made sending migrants back a condition of market access, and called it trade policy. The European Parliament on Tuesday approved a reform of its 50-year-old preferential tariff scheme for developing countries. A last-minute push by rice-farming interests threatened to unsettle the deal; unresolved WTO questions remain unresolved.
A reform of the EU’s main trade preference scheme for developing countries cleared the European Parliament on Tuesday — but only after European rice farmers threatened the four-year negotiation. Italian and Spanish lawmakers from the centre-right EPP tried at the last minute to lower the threshold at which automatic safeguards on rice imports kick in — from a 45 per cent import surge to 20 per cent, arguing the higher bar left European producers defenceless against cheaper Asian competition. The attempt failed, but it came close enough to alarm the file’s lead negotiator, Bernd Lange (S&D/DEU), who told Politico ahead of the vote that the text was “a really fragile compromise.”
Under the now approved compromise, developing countries can lose their preferential tariff access if they fail to cooperate on returning migrants. Those refused entry or residency in the EU are covered by the condition.
A migration price tag
The vote concluded with 459 in favour, 127 against, and 70 abstentions. The Generalised Scheme of Preferences will now come into effect from January 2027. The programme grants developing countries reduced tariffs on exports to the EU; negotiations stalled in 2023 when Parliament suspended talks over the migration condition.
You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get a pretty good deal.
— Bernd Lange, lead negotiator, European Parliament (S&D/DEU)
The December 2025 deal with member states included a softened version of the migration condition. It requires at least a year of formal engagement with a beneficiary country before any tariff withdrawal can be triggered. “You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get a pretty good deal,” Mr Lange wrote on X after the vote. “Trade is not an end in itself: it is a tool and we have made it even better. In a tense world, the EU proves to be a reliable partner.”
Legal questions over whether tying trade preferences to migrant readmission is compatible with WTO rules remain unresolved. It is a challenge that may outlast the negotiations it survived.
