The new Return Regulation allows Member States to deport a person to a country they’ve never been to and detain them there indefinitely. This is what’s behind the so-called return hubs – one of the most contested parts of the Regulation approved by a conservative and far-right majority in the European Parliament on 17 June.
The European People’s Party greeted the vote with ‘return means return’ whilst right-wing MEPs chanted ‘send them back’. Yet this is precisely what return hubs won’t do. They’ll hold people somewhere they have no connection to at all – removed from Europe but no closer to being returned home, because the obstacle that blocked their return is still there.
In recent years, being ‘fair and firm‘ and finding ‘innovative solutions’ have become euphemisms for large-scale detention, forced deportation and containment beyond the EU’s borders, as far as possible from the reach of courts. Respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law survive only as formulaic phrases in legislative texts but they’ve been hollowed out of any real meaning.
Return hubs in a nutshell
Compared to the current Return Directive, the Return Regulation redefines what can legally be qualified as a ‘country of return’. Up to now, a person could only be sent back to their own country, a country they had passed through or one they explicitly agreed to go to. The Regulation adds a new and far broader option: any third country that simply agrees to take them qualifies – whether or not the person has ever set foot there, and whether or not it’s their own country.
To make this possible, Member States can strike deals with third countries. They don’t need to be legal agreements but can be ‘arrangements’ – non-binding instruments that may easily escape democratic scrutiny and public oversight.
In a discussion paper from February 2025, the Polish Presidency of the Council noted that the preferred approach was to frame the legal basis in a ‘flexible way’ that ‘would prevent judicial scrutiny that could put the implementation of this innovative solution at risk’. The informal nature of these arrangements is intentional: it’s what keeps (or tries to keep) the scheme away from the courts.
During the trilogue negotiations, several safeguards were weakened. Families with children, originally exempt in the Commission’s original proposal, are now no longer explicitly excluded. Only unaccompanied minors remain out of the Regulation’s scope. Independent monitoring – already limited to how the agreement is applied and not covering whether people’s rights are upheld – is now required only when people are to be sent on from the hub to yet another country.
After much back-and-forth, the Regulation comes with a one-year implementation period – except for the return hubs, which will be set up as soon as the Regulation enters into force.
Over the past few months, Member States have already focused their efforts on finding potential third countries such as Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Egypt, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Montenegro and Ethiopia.
Any evidence?
In 2018, the Commission found that sending someone ‘against their will, to a country they do not originate from or have not transited through’ was not possible under EU law without ‘a revision of EU rules’. It also deemed the risk of refoulement too high and concluded that ‘it is questionable whether this scenario is in line with EU values’. While that revision is now underway, the risk is still very much there, as is the potential clash with EU values.
Past offshoring experiences show the limits of this approach. Italy’s scheme in Albania isn’t a return hub but it’s the closest thing in operation. And the record is telling: vulnerable people wrongly transferred there only to be sent back, centres standing largely empty at a cost of around EUR 700 million over five years and Italian judges refusing from the very first day to validate transfers.
On the other side of the world, Australia’s offshore ‘model’ shows no lasting deterrent effect and thousands of documented allegations of abuse, with a bill running into the billions, and the UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee Against Torture finding Australia responsible for arbitrary detention and ill treatment.
On the return hubs, both the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights warned that – while not unlawful in principle – the safeguards required under EU and international law are so demanding that almost no one could actually be transferred lawfully.
It’s also important to note that effective control means responsibility. In operating or transferring people to return hubs, Member States will be implementing EU law, meaning the Charter of Fundamental Rights will apply. Each agreement or arrangement will allocate responsibilities differently across the Member States, third country authorities and the EU or international personnel involved. Distance and complexity don’t remove responsibility under EU law or the ECHR – they only make it harder to enforce.
Not business as usual
The situation is so far from normal that proposing specific policy recommendations (as would normally be the case in a CEPS commentary) feels beside the point. The Return Regulation – together with other recent legislative and policy proposals – undermines the very ‘values’ the EU is founded on.
EU-funded research projects, UN independent experts and civil society have repeatedly proven that draconian migration policies do not work, that they only produce unsafety wherever and whenever regular pathways and regularisation mechanisms are missing. The aforementioned Polish Presidency paper – together with the ongoing pressure on the European Court of Human Rights – says the quiet part out loud: the only way for this system to work is with limited to no legal scrutiny.
The Commission and most MEPs and Member States have not only failed in their duty to uphold fundamental rights. They also keep choosing to disregard the evidence on what effective and rights-compliant policies look like, how people actually fall into irregularity and what the very people implementing the return policy (police, detention officers, judges etc.) have to say.
Litigation at the national level may now help open policymakers’ eyes to the fact that harsh policies don’t guarantee effectiveness, nor smooth implementation.
Ultimately, when ideological and partisan calculations are allowed to overrule all evidence, it’s not only ‘the migrants’ who lose. It’s the EU itself which loses, along with every EU citizen.
