European Commission rejects anti-immigration citizens’ initiative on legal grounds

The European Commission has formally rejected a European Citizens’ Initiative launched earlier this year by two white supremacists seeking the mass deportation of people through what they describe as “remigration.”

“The initiative will not be registered by the Commission,” EU Commissioner for Social Rights Roxana Mînzatu said.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels on Wednesday (July 22), Mînzatu said the initiative lacked a valid legal basis.

In a more detailed explanation, the Commission said the proposal would constitute discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnic origin.

Brussels focused in particular on the initiative’s proposed temporary moratorium on new “non-Western” migration channels, including visas for education and family reunification.

The Commission said the campaign sought to justify the moratorium by invoking the “ethnic and cultural continuity” of Europe’s “indigenous peoples” and opposition to what its charter describes as “demographic replacement” by non-Western and non-European migrants.

Despite the Commission’s decision, the “Save Europe Act” had gathered nearly 600,000 signatures as of publication, including support from ultranationalist politicians, ethnonationalist activists and several members of the European Parliament calling for Europe to remain predominantly white and Christian.

Beyond the proposed migration moratorium, the initiative calls for tighter external border controls, faster deportation procedures, asylum system reform, the removal of welfare incentives it identifies as encouraging migration, and the creation of an EU-wide framework for remigration supported by voluntary or financial incentives.

Among those who signed the initiative was former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, along with newly elected European Parliament member Balázs Orbán.

Also backing the proposal were Björn Höcke, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader in the German state of Thuringia who was previously fined for using a Nazi-era slogan, and Maximilian Märkl of Germany’s Identitarian Movement.

Members of the European Parliament who signed the initiative also include Italian lawmaker Roberto Vannacci, who recently founded the National Future party, which is ideologically similar to the AfD.

Other prominent MEP signatories include Austria’s Petra Steger, Belgium’s Filip Dewinter and Barbara Bonte, Germany’s Tomasz Froelich, Slovakia’s Milan Uhrik, Slovenia’s Branko Grims and Poland’s Dominik Tarczyński.

The initiative was launched in late May by Dutch white supremacist Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, calling for an end to all non-Western and non-European migration.

It also sought to persuade other individuals, including those deemed to impose “a significant cultural or financial burden on member states,” to leave voluntarily.

Earlier this month, Vlaardingerbroek staged a promotional event outside the European Parliament to rally support for the proposal.

“The people want remigration!” she wrote on X.

Remigration is a term commonly used by Western right-wing and ethnonationalist movements to describe the mass deportation of migrants, including individuals who hold European citizenship.

In a post on X, the campaign criticized the Commission’s decision, saying, “Their motivation is vague, weak and reveals their true anti-democratic nature,” and accused the Commission of ignoring “the voices of nearly 600,000 European patriots.”

Following Wednesday’s rejection, the campaign team said it would announce its next steps shortly, presenting the decision not as the end of the movement but as further evidence of the political confrontation it was created to provoke.