European Union lawmakers reached an agreement this week that will pave the way for the establishment of deportation centres outside the bloc’s borders, a policy championed by figures such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The European Council and EU Parliament negotiators came to a deal this week, which will “enable faster and more effective” deportations of illegal migrants, including the establishment of “return hubs” in third-party nations, as has been done by the American government under President Donald Trump with El Salvador.
French Member of EU Parliament François-Xavier Bellamy, who led the negotiating team for the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), said of the agreement: “For too long, Europe has had a system where return orders were routinely ignored.”
“Let’s be clear: four out of five non-EU nationals who have received a formal return decision from a Member State do not leave. That is not a functioning system. That is failure. Today, we are ending that situation by facilitating returns, extending detention periods, removing the automatically suspensive effect of appeals, and providing a legal framework for return hubs in third countries. This is not just another piece of legislation, but the condition for regaining control of migration policy in Europe,” Bellamy said.
“For years, Europe sent the worst possible message: even if you had no right to stay, chances were high that nothing would happen,” he added. “That era is ending. If you have no right to stay in Europe, you will have to leave.”
Under the deal, which will replace the 2008 Return Directive, return hubs can either function as transit stations to hold illegals during the deportation process to send them back to their homelands, or perhaps more critically, can also function as a return destination in and of itself, meaning that illegals who destroy their native passports before coming to Europe in a bid to prevent their swift removal can be sent to such third party countries without the expectation of returning home or to the EU.
In addition to establishing migrant return hubs, the deal will also pave the way for EU member states to impose indefinite entry bans on those deemed security risks. Those who enter anyway could face prison. However, such cases will likely need to be tested legally, with the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) often using its powers to block the removal of criminals and even terrorists from Europe.
The agreement will likely allow for the agreement between Albania and Italy to fully come into force and perhaps quickly, given that Rome had already paid Tirana for the use of multiple facilities to house illegals.
The deal should also eliminate the main cause of objection to the Albanian model, namely that some illegals were intended to be sent back to their unsafe homelands. With Albania potentially being established as a deportation endpoint, such objections would likely become irrelevant.
The move may also open up avenues for potential agreements with countries like Rwanda, which successfully negotiated a similar deal to house illegals for the former Conservative British government, but which saw the agreement with London terminated by the left-wing Labour Party government as one of its first acts after coming to power in 2024