EXCLUSIVE: Migration – Massive shifts currently happening across the Channel

EU countries start copying UK’s homework, as bloc’s ‘unity’ disintegrates in open revolt

We reveal the chronic disharmony now evident in Andy Burnham’s beloved EU

The EU’s approach to immigration is undergoing its most radical transformation in decades, driven by a desperate political push to enforce deportations and control its external borders.

Sound familiar?

For the UK audience, the terminology and debates happening across the EU about immigration will resonate. With little being said in most of the media, GB News summarises what’s going on across the Channel. Does Andy Burnham know that his socialist, open borders EU no longer exists?

In another exclusive for GB News, Stand for Our Sovereignty (SOS), together with colleagues at The think-thank Facts4EU and The Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIBUK.Org), have probed the latest official EU announcements as well as statements by European national leaders. The conclusion is clear:

The imitation and the hypocrisy: The great EU-turn

Ironically, Reform UK was criticised by mainstream British and European media for demanding strict offshore detention and zero-tolerance deportations. Yet, the Dutch coalition government, the Austrian Chancellor, and even Germany’s interior ministry are now openly championing similar ideas. What was labelled “extreme” in Westminster is becoming official policy across the EU.

The Commission’s back-tracking

The European Commission’s shift is pure realpolitik. Ursula von der Leyen initially insisted that the ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’ was a complete, watertight solution. This promptly caused uproar in many European capitals, particularly in the North of the bloc.

After two years of arguments, and fearing a populist wipeout in elections across France, Germany, and the Netherlands, the Commission had to capitulate.

The Commission has now effectively admitted that traditional, internal EU asylum processing has failed. They have been forced to look outside their own borders to maintain control.

This hardening of the institutional line was echoed by the EU Commissioner for Migration, Magnus Brunner, during the pact’s operational and legal launch:

The Rise of the ‘Copenhagen Five’

Despite these verbal climbdowns from Brussels, national leaders are taking matters into their own hands, bypassing slow EU machinery.

A powerful coalition convened by Denmark – comprising Denmark, Germany, Austria, Greece, and the Netherlands – has formed an alliance known as the “Copenhagen Five”. Their explicit goal is to establish operational third-country deportation centres outside European soil by the end of 2027.

While pro-migrant NGOs warn that these hubs are a “crimmigration” trap that will be shot down by the courts, the Copenhagen Five are moving forward, actively eyeing advanced discussions with Uganda and – predictably – Rwanda.

In June the EU Parliament passed an EU Commission ‘EU Return Regulation’ which permits these hubs, but with so many conditions attached they would be vastly expensive and to all intents and purposes unworkable. This Regulation awaits approval from the EU Council this month.

The open revolt and the “solidarity fines”

Despite strong opposition, the Commission’s ‘Pact’ became law on 12 June 2026. Most controversially it introduces a “mandatory solidarity” rule. If a country refuses to take its quota of migrants from frontline states such as Greece or Italy, it is hit with a severe financial penalty of €20,000 (approx. £17,000 GBP) per rejected migrant.

On the frontline of the open revolt against this are Poland and Hungary, who have explicitly stated they will refuse to pay a single Euro in fines, viewing it as an unconstitutional assault on their sovereignty. The Netherlands has formally requested an official ‘opt-out’ from EU migration rules altogether.

If these countries refuse to pay, the Commission’s only recourse is to dock the money directly from their EU structural funding. This sets up an unprecedented internal fiscal war, threatening to paralyse the bloc’s central budget.

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Observations

In the face of decisions by democratically-elected governments in several EU countries, the unelected officials from the Commission have been dragged into a set of concessions over its ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’.

The simple fact is that Ursula von der Leyen and her colleagues have been unable to keep all member countries happy. This happens to concern an issue which – as in the UK – has become increasingly high-profile with the electorates of these countries. It has therefore attracted more headlines within the EU than many of the other areas in which the Commission has sought to interfere.

Everywhere you look, this Commission has taken a more arrogant approach in its desire to legislate over the lives of ordinary Europeans. It remains the case that at the heart of the EU there is the profoundly undemocratic system whereby the Commission is the only EU body able to put forward new laws governing member states at a European level. The MEPs of the EU Parliament can only vote for or against these measures but have no right to legislate for themselves.

This democratic deficit is stark but it takes issues such as immigration to bring this to the fore. The fact for Andy Burnham is that the electorates of many EU countries have been lurching to the Right. This was demonstrated most recently at the weekend, in one of Germany’s regional elections. (Berlin can be discounted as it’s similar to London in not representing the views of the majority.) With general elections coming up next year, even more countries will be turning blue, rather than the red Mr Burnham remembers the last time he looked.

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