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EU
considers offshore centres for deportees as it hardens on migration
Idea of
‘return hubs’ gains traction after mainstream EU politicians were unnerved by
rise of far right
Jennifer
Rankin in Brussels and Lorenzo Tondo
Thu 17 Oct
2024 23.29 CEST
The EU has
opened the door to the untested idea of “return hubs” – offshore centres for
people deported from the bloc – at a summit dominated by plans for a tougher
migration policy.
The idea of
the offshore processing of asylum claims or vaguely defined “return hubs” in
non-EU countries has gained traction in recent weeks, after large gains for the
far right in European elections in June unnerved mainstream leaders across the
continent.
Speaking to
reporters after the one-day summit, the European Commission president, Ursula
von der Leyen, said EU leaders had discussed the idea of “developing return
hubs outside the European Union” for people with no right to stay.
There were
open questions, she said: “How long can people be there? What are you doing,
for example, if a return is not possible?”
She did not
mention any countries that might host such hubs.
In 2018
north African governments rejected EU plans to host migrant processing centres,
known as “disembarkation platforms”, in their countries.
Von der
Leyen has also said the EU should learn from the Italian prime minister Giorgia
Meloni’s deal with Albania, an EU candidate country that is hosting two asylum
centres to process the claims of men intercepted in international waters trying
to reach Italy.
Meloni said
that there were “many countries looking at the Albania model”, and praised von
der Leyen. “There is a desire to work on pragmatic solutions,” she said.
Amid turmoil
in the Middle East, the Italian prime minister also urged fellow EU leaders to
review their policy on Syria so refugees from that country can “return home
voluntarily, safely and sustainably”.
The
proposal, yet to be fully fleshed out in public, underscores how Europe has
moved on since 2015. Then the EU’s most powerful leader, Angela Merkel declared
“we can manage it” as 1.3 million people sought refugee, mainly from Syria,
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Before the
summit, 11 national leaders took part in a meeting organised by Italy, Denmark
and the Netherlands to discuss “innovative solutions”, a mantra for leaders
seeking alternatives to the status quo. Von der Leyen and the leaders of
Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Cyprus and
Malta attended the meeting.
The Danish
prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said that until now, raising such issues had
been “a bit like shouting in an empty sports hall”. Now there were “many
countries that work together on this”, said Frederiksen, a Social Democrat with
a hard line on immigration.
“A great
number of Europeans are tired of us helping people from outside who commit
crimes. Some are radicalised,” she said. “It can’t go on like this. Therefore,
there is a limit as to how many people we can help.”
The Dutch
prime minister, Dick Schoof, who leads a government dominated by the party of
the far-right leader Geert Wilders, said: “We see that there is a different
mood in Europe.”
His
government said on Wednesday it was considering a plan to send rejected African
asylum seekers to Uganda. It was not immediately clear whether such a plan
would be legal, feasible, or acceptable to Kampala.
The
commission has also promised legal proposals to increase deportations of people
denied asylum and ordered to return to their country of origin – currently only
about one in five people.
“Returns are
the missing link in our migration policy,” the Greek prime minister, Kyriákos
Mitsotákis, said. “I am happy about the fact that we recognise that we need to
think outside the box to address this pressing concern.”
But
Mitsotákis also voiced scepticism about whether the Italy-Albania model could
be replicated across the EU. Speaking to the Financial Times, he called for
efforts to increase legal migration, as well as clamp down on irregular
arrivals. “Who is going to pick our olives?” he said, stressing the need for
skilled and unskilled labour.
Spain’s
prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said he was not in favour of the Italian model
because it created more problems. He advised working with countries of origin
to ensure migration is “orderly, secure and equalised”.
Other EU
leaders cast doubt on the offshore centres or offered more lukewarm support.
“These so-called migration hub solutions have never been shown to be very
effective in the past and the cost is very, very expensive,” Belgium’s prime
minister, Alexander De Croo, told reporters.
Ireland’s
taoiseach, Simon Harris, said the EU needed to be very careful its proposals
were not misrepresented. He had “deplored everything” about the previous
British government’s scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, he added. “I
thought it was downright stupid, to be quite honest. It didn’t really work,
didn’t really result in anything happening.”
The Rwanda
deal was more radical than the Italian-Albanian agreement, because even
successful asylum claimants would not be allowed to return to the UK.
Around the
table many leaders voiced support for Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk, who
said his country was facing hybrid war from Russia and Belarus. The Polish
government has accused Belarus and Russia of seeking to destabilise the EU by
luring migrants from the Middle East and Africa to “storm” the Polish border.
In a victory
for Tusk, who recently announced plans to suspend the right to asylum, EU
leaders agreed: “exceptional situations require appropriate measures”.
Countries
along the EU’s eastern land borders have recorded a 192% increase in migrant
arrivals (13,200) so far this year, according to the EU border agency Frontex.
But overall the number of irregular border crossings has fallen to 166,000
during the first nine months of the year: a 42% decline from the previous year.
While EU
leaders are keen to learn from Italy’s Albania deal, Italian opposition parties
called the scheme “a total flop”, after the first people transferred under the
agreement arrived at the port of Shëngjin on Wednesday. Of the men – 10 from
Bangladesh and six from Egypt – four were sent back to Italy, including two who
were underage and two who were vulnerable.
Opposition
parties and national newspapers said the initiative, which will cost about €1bn
(£830m) over five years, was a failure, highlighting that the government spent
€250,000 to transport the 16 people on a military ship from the Sicilian island
of Lampedusa to Albania.
The project
was devised to alleviate the pressure on Lampedusa, where thousands of migrants
land annually from north Africa, pushing the small island’s reception capacity
to its limits.
“A thousand
migrants have landed in Lampedusa in the last few hours, and only 16 left
Lampedusa for Albania on an 80-metre military ship with 70 sailors on a cruise
that cost at least €250,000 just for fuel,” said Dolores Bevilacqua, from the
Five Star Movement, speaking in the Italian senate on Wednesday. “These numbers
best describe the failure of the Albania plan, through which Meloni aimed to
ease the congestion of the Lampedusa reception centre.”
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