Ex­cep­tion­al pro­ced­ures and fun­da­ment­al rights safe­guards in EU return reform

De­vel­op­ment sum­mary

Mădălina Moraru’s art­icle in German Law Journ­al crit­ic­ally as­sesses the 2024–2026 reform of the EU return pro­ced­ure and its impact on the return acquis and mi­gra­tion reg­u­lat­ory frame­work. It in­tro­duces “ex­cep­tion­al­ized plur­al­ism” to de­scribe the mul­ti­plic­a­tion of derog­at­ory return tracks at ex­tern­al and in­tern­al EU bor­ders and ex­tra­ter­rit­ori­ally, and argues that this ar­chi­tec­ture raises con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns re­gard­ing ac­cel­er­ated border trans­fers, the European Return Order, pre-removal de­ten­tion and return hubs.

The art­icle argues that the emer­ging system’s le­git­im­acy de­pends on match­ing en­force­ment har­mon­iz­a­tion with con­crete im­ple­ment­a­tion of Charter-based safe­guards.