Government ministers win key legal challenge making it easier to kick EU criminals out of the UK

Ministers have won a key legal victory in the fight to deport European Union citizens who commit crimes in Britain.

A new ruling by the immigration courts set a higher bar for European offenders who attempt to bring human rights claims to avoid deportation for recent crimes.

It means that - thanks to Britain's historic Brexit vote - EU criminals who commit offences here will be treated like any other foreign national during the deportation process, rather than receiving preferential treatment.

The successful legal challenge, brought by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, affects the way the Home Office can remove EU criminals convicted of committing offences from 2021 onwards.

It will make it more difficult for offenders to claim it would be 'disproportionate' to remove them if they were convicted after the EU Withdrawal Agreement came into force.

The case centred on convicted drug dealer Katarina Vargova, a Slovak national. She was jailed for two years and one month in 2022 for her role in a Berkshire-based drugs ring that saw police seize heroin and cocaine with a street value of £182,000.

Vargova, now 38 and who was living in High Wycombe, Bucks, at the time, was convicted of possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply.

While she was in prison, in November 2022, the Home Office issued her with a deportation notice. 

Vargova lodged a human rights claim in January 2023 as part of the internal Home Office appeal procedures, which was refused in February this year.

She used Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to private and family life - to claim that deportation was 'disproportionate' due to her 'strong private life established whilst lawfully in the UK exercising treaty rights, and the fact her deportation is not in the interests of her rehabilitation'.

She then lodged an appeal in the lower immigration tribunal. There, a judge ruled the Home Office had placed a 'disproportionate emphasis on the appellant's past offending'.

Judge Farin Anthony concluded: 'Having applied the safeguards as set out in the Withdrawal Agreement and having applied the EU law principles of proportionality, I reached the conclusion that the expulsion decision by the respondent is a disproportionate measure.'

The Home Secretary then appealed against that initial decision, and won. Her lawyers argued that the Withdrawal Agreement 'specifically agreed' that an EU citizen's 'post-transition conduct should be treated differently from pre-transition period conduct' and that Britain should be 'permitted to apply its national legislation' rather than EU law.

The new ruling by the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber said: 'We find Judge Anthony has erred in law in a manner material to the decision to allow the appeal, for the reasons set out in the Secretary of State's grounds seeking permission to appeal, the grant of permission to appeal, and in light of our primary finding in relation to the approach to be taken in relation to the deportation of an EU national who has committed offences after the specified date.'

The panel, chaired by the president Mr Justice Dove, ordered the lower tribunal to hear Vargova's case again.

Crucially, they said their ruling provided 'clarity' on how similar cases should be dealt with.

EU nationals found to have committed crimes up to December 31, 2020, are treated differently and will still benefit from rules which applied during the UK's membership of the bloc.

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Foreign nationals who commit crimes should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced and, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation.'