There’s no flattery like imitation, at least when it comes to migration control. Taking their lead from aggressive migration control measures in Denmark and the UK, Lithuania’s parliament last week approved the mass detention of migrants and curbed their right of appeal, in a move meant to deter high numbers crossing into the EU from Belarus. The new law bans any release of migrants from detention for six months after their arrival, curbs the right of appeal for rejected asylum seekers and stipulates that migrants can be deported while their appeals are being considered. Draconian? Yes. An illegal breach of human rights? Quite possibly. The problem for the European Commission is that having itself vacated the moral high ground on migration control, and instead chasing its own short–term solutions, there is little it can do to stop member states acting with such impunity without being accused of hypocrisy. After the Danish parliament passed the law allowing it to relocate asylum seekers to other countries outside the EU and opened talks with Rwanda about hosting a migration centre, a European Commission spokesman stated that the law risked “undermining the foundations of the international protection system for the world’s refugees.” EU rules, the spokesman added, forbid “externalisation” of the right to asylum. Yet in practice, the bloc drove a coach and horses through this principle when it agreed its multi-billion euro ‘cash–for–migrants’ deal with Recep Erdoğan’s Turkey in 2015. The agreement with Erdogan may have seemed a good idea at the time, when large numbers of Syrian refugees were fleeing civil war and heading for Europe, prompting panic from many governments, particularly those in central, eastern and southern Europe. | 
