Steve Turley claims that for decades, the European Parliament:
- "lectured sovereign nations about the importance of open borders and human rights"
- "called Europe's patriots far right extremists"
- "labelled concerns over mass migration racist"
- "been punishing nations like Hungary and Poland for refusing to open up their borders"
And that it just "voted to begin mass deportations throughout the continent, Trump style", insinuating it was hypocritical and saying the left was having a total meltdown.
The European Parliament didn't actually vote "to begin mass deportations", and the Newsweek article he featured in his video doesn't say that either, just talking about third party deporations (i.e. sending failed asylum-seekers to countries other than the ones they are citizens of) and
to ease the creation of detention facilities outside EU territory and increase penalties and entry bans for migrants who refuse to leave
Despite the article's headline's invocation of Trump, the article also reports that there was nothing on ICE-like raids looking for illegal immigrants, with the EU’s border agency Frontex ruling them out.
In other words, nothing controversial, unless you believe in open borders.
As for the allegations of hypocrisy, the EU is a big entity with many subentities.
As an analogy, let's look at the US.
Trump is not the same as the House of Representatives.
In February 2026, the House of Representatives voted to overturn Trump's tariffs on Canada.
So if we just collapse all US government entities into "the US", we could say that the same institution that imposed tariffs on Canada voted to remove them, and accuse the US of being incoherent, hypocritical etc.
Now let us look at each claim in turn.
"lectured sovereign nations about the importance of open borders and human rights"
Human rights are not incompatible with what the European Parliament just voted in favor of.
No EU institution seems to have called for open borders.
Maybe Turley is thinking of the 2016 ACP-EU Assembly's statement on the "inalienable right to migrate", but that is not the European Parliament per se. There're 78 EU members in the modern version of that, the OACPS-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, but the European Parliament has 720 members.
"called Europe's patriots far right extremists"
He doesn't say who counts as a "patriot", so I can't specifically analyse this claim, but it is notable that parties opposing mass migration started to be a significant force in the European Parliament from 2014, so it's been more than a decade.
Perhaps he has in mind Ursula von der Leyen alluding to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) being Putin's "friends" by saying she would only work with "pro-European, pro-NATO, pro-Ukrainian, clearly supporters of our democratic values". Whatever you might think of that (e.g. whether this is the same as calling them "far right extremists" or whether you consider AfD "patriots"), Von der Leyen is (and was) President of the European Commission, not part of the European Parliament.
- "labelled concerns over mass migration racist"
The European Parliament does not seem to have done that.
Maybe Turley is thinking of a report by the Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs under the Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Right-wing extremism in the EU. In that case it would be the policy department in particular, even if the report was requested by the LIBE committee (the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs; presumably they didn't tell the Policy Department what to write in the report). And even so, the report doesn't label concerns over mass migration racist, but says it can be considered "Nativism/ radical nationalism" or "Right-wing populism".
Or maybe he's thinking of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), which does talk about "racism and racial discrimination" against "migrants and people with migration backgrounds". But they're not even part of the EU, but the Council of Europe.
"been punishing nations like Hungary and Poland for refusing to open up their borders"
It was the European Court of Justice that fined Hungary €200 million for not following the rules on migrants and it's the European Commission that's threatening Poland over their migrant policy. Not the European Parliament.
So in summary, Steve Turley is reflexively criticising the European Parliament and blaming it for all the sins of the EU as a whole (and even some non-EU institutions).
