EU wants UN backing for Rwanda-style migrant ‘return hubs'

Times

5 days ago

The European Union is seeking United Nations support for plans to forcibly deport failed asylum seekers or illegal migrants to 'return hubs' outside Europe, to avoid the legal challenges that sank Britain's Rwanda scheme.
European interior ministers will hear presentations from the UN on the conditions for its refugee agency to take part in, and approve, deportation or 'place of safety' centres in countries such as Tunisia, Mauritania, Jordan, Egypt or Uganda.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, last year called for an exploration of return hubs in a letter to the EU's national leaders, citing a deal between Italy and Albania as a possible model.
Kaare Dybvad, the Danish immigration minister, who is chairing the talks in Copenhagen, stressed that the plans were urgently needed to 'get control of migration flow back into the democratic sphere', as European elections show increasing gains for nationalist and populist parties.
'The European asylum system is broken and we need innovative solutions,' he said before the talks. 'We are under pressure. We need to return people faster, we need to make innovative solutions and agreements outside of the EU.'
Up to 80 per cent of failed asylum seekers — half of those who apply — who were ordered to leave countries across Europe have not done so, including dangerous criminals and terror suspects who have gone on to carry out attacks.
While the EU is moving towards plans similar to the British Rwanda model — of setting up centres outside Europe to deter asylum seekers — governments want to ensure that plans are legally watertight, especially after judicial challenges to the Italian scheme in Albania.
Crucially, under these plans, migrants housed in the 'return hubs' would already have been refused asylum — unlike those covered in Britain's Rwanda plan or Italy's Albanian asylum centres.
'It is part of the legislative work that we have to do now and to make sure it is possible,' said Dybvad. 'Return hubs are about returning people who are already rejected as asylum seekers. Reception centres as in Albania … as in Rwanda, that is about processing asylum claims. We need to make our own European model for these solutions.'
On top of deportations, the EU is additionally looking at 'places of safety' centres for temporary reception and screening of refugees. UN involvement is seen as vital to making these proposals legally watertight and preventing judges from striking down plans.
A 2023 ruling in the British Supreme Court against the Rwanda scheme followed a warning from the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, that it potentially breached the international conventions that set rules for asylum.
A diplomat said: 'It is about showing that this is not a taboo with the UN and that we can work with them to make it more legally viable.'
The UNHCR has not ruled out supporting the EU deportation centres but has asked for many legal safeguards that would water down and restrict the powers that national governments would have to detain and deport failed asylum seekers.
Under a new EU return directive, tabled in March, deportations will be carried out either to the migrant's country of origin, or a country they transited through as well as a new option of a 'return hub' — an idea that was previously ruled out as illegal.
The UN is opposed to EU proposals that failed asylum seekers or foreign criminals will no longer be able to have their deportations suspended while their appeal is heard, a loophole that often allows people to disappear upon their release.
Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, warned that the status quo was not an option. He said: 'Today our states are totally disarmed, especially for forced removals. Throughout Europe, whether governments are conservative or social democrat, all the peoples have the same demand: control of mass immigration that has completely escaped us.'