BRUSSELS — After years of being treated as an outlier for its hardline stance on migration, Denmark says it has finally brought the rest of the EU on board with its tough approach.

Europe’s justice and home affairs ministers on Monday approved new measures allowing EU countries to remove failed asylum seekers, set up processing centers overseas and create removal hubs outside their borders — measures Copenhagen has long advocated.

The deal was “many years in the making,” said Rasmus Stoklund, Denmark’s center-left minister for integration who has driven migration negotiations during his country’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU.

Stoklund told POLITICO that when he first started working on the migration brief a decade ago in the Danish parliament, his fellow left-wingers around the bloc viewed his government’s position as so egregious that “other social democrats wouldn’t meet with me.” Over the last few years, “there’s been a huge change in perception,” Stoklund said.

When the deal was done Monday, the “sigh of relief” from ministers and their aides was palpable, with people embracing one another and heaping praise on both the Danish brokers and Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission that put forward the initial proposal, according to a diplomat who was in the room.

Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssell, a member of the conservative Moderate party, told POLITICO Monday’s deal was vital “to preserve, like, any public trust at all in the migration system today … we need to show that the system is working.”

Stockholm, which has in the past prided itself on taking a liberal approach to migration, has recently undergone a Damascene conversion to the Danish model, implementing tough measures to limit family reunification, tightening rules around obtaining Swedish citizenship, and limiting social benefits for new arrivals.

Forssell said the deal was important because “many people” around Europe criticize the EU over inaction on migration “because they cannot do themselves what [should be done] on the national basis.” The issue, he said, is a prime example of “why there must be a strong European Union.”

Sealing the deal

Monday’s deal — whose impact will “hopefully be quite dramatic,” Stoklund said — comes two years after the EU signed off on a new law governing asylum and migration, which must be implemented by June.

Voters have “made clear to governments all over the European Union, that they couldn’t accept that they weren’t able to control the access to their countries,” Stoklund said.

“Governments have realized that if they didn’t take this question seriously, then [voters] would back more populist movements that would take it seriously — and use more drastic measures in order to find new solutions.”

Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, the Danish Council presidency and ministers were at pains to point out that Monday’s agreement showed the EU could get deals done.

After the last EU election in 2024, the new Commission’s “first task” was to “bring our European house in order,” Brunner said. “Today we’re showing that Europe can actually deliver and we delivered quite a lot.”

What’s new

The ministers backed new rules to detain and deport migrants, including measures that would allow the bloc and individual countries to cut deals to set up migration processing hubs in other nations, regardless of whether the people being moved there have a connection with those countries.

Ministers supported changes that will allow capitals to reject applications if asylum seekers, prior to first entering the EU, could have received international protection in a non-EU country the bloc deems safe, and signed off on a common list of countries of origin considered safe.

Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia are on that latter list, as are countries that are candidates to join the EU. But the deal also leaves room for exceptions — such as Ukraine, which is at war.

Asylum seekers won’t automatically have the right to remain in the EU while they appeal a ruling that their refuge application was inadmissible.

The next step for the measures will be negotiations with the European Parliament, once it has decided its position on the proposals.

Max Griera contributed reporting.