The European Commission won't use the word "deportation" to describe kicking out failed asylum seekers and rejected migrants from the European Union.
It is a word loaded with historical horrors of World War II, where Nazi Germany deported millions of Jews to extermination camps in eastern Europe.
The ensuing genocide of millions have left inedible scars and soul-searching for a European leadership that has since promised never to repeat history. It also has its antecedents in Stalinist deportations.
So whenever the word comes up to help describe an EU policy, the European Commission will insist on using terminology such as "returns", "voluntary returns", "forced returns" or even transfers.
The euphemisms are meant to neutralise the negative connotations, including "voluntary returns".
Yet one European Commission official, at a background briefing in March, still managed to frame even "voluntary returns" as a threat.
"One way of incentivising voluntary return is the clarity of what happens if you think that you can play the system," he said.
"It also can concentrate the mind and stimulate a very serious discussion and choices around voluntary return," he added.
In public, the phrase seeks to distance the commission from the likely human rights abuses that sometimes arise when coercion is used to remove people — even if only psychological.
When it comes to the word "deportation", the commission also argues it is not legally defined at the EU level.
"While deportation and removal often are understood as synonyms, deportation is not used as a legal term in all EU member states," it says.
Earlier this week, journalists in Brussels attending a technical briefing on asylum organised by the commission were reminded once again not to say deportation.
"I would refrain from using the word deported," said a commission official.
The request came when pressed on how its latest proposal would allow member states to turn back asylum seeker hopefuls and possibly send them abroad to a country they have never been to.
Historical and legal spin aside, however, the word deportation remains an appropriate description of what is happening.
Former migration commissioner, Ylva Johansson, herself used the word after the New York Times revealed that Greece had deported a Frontex interpreter to Turkey.
"He's [Frontex interpreter] been humiliated and victim of violence and robbed and deported to a third country he has no relation to," she said in December 2021.
"[It] seems to be clear deportation and this is not the first time that we had this situation," she again said of the Frontex interpreter, in June 2023 while addressing the European Parliament's civil liberties committee.
The interpreter was a victim of a pushback, a form of deportation that is a reality along much of the EU's external border.
But the commission, for all its careful posturing, does not now get to decide why "deported" is a word that cannot be used to describe policies that rights defenders say are cruel and inhumane.
Its latest iteration opens up the possibility for an asylum hopeful to be deported to a third country he has no relation to, echoing the phrase used by its own former commissioner.
Catherine Woollard, director at the Brussels-based European Council of Refugees and Exiles, was more direct.
"More people will be deported to countries that are not safe in reality," she said, in an op-ed.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.
Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.