EU accelerates deportation hubs plan after Ceuta crisis

When an estimated 70,000 Moroccans crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta over two days in late July, the images of young men swimming around border fences and climbing through chain-link gaps travelled faster than any policy response. More than 80 people died in the attempt. By the time European home affairs ministers convened an emergency video summit on 4 August, 22 countries had already signed a letter demanding action. The crisis lasted 48 hours; the political aftermath is only beginning.

The legal framework takes shape

What ministers discussed in that closed session has not been published, but Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Giorgia Meloni wanted return hubs to be the "main course" of the talks. The concept, asylum processing and deportation centres located in third countries outside EU jurisdiction, has circulated since at least 2018. It was written into law in mid-June 2025 as Article 17 of the new Return Regulation, part of the bloc's sweeping migration overhaul.

The regulation defines return hubs as holding facilities for "illegally staying third-country nationals" who have already received a deportation order. Asylum seekers whose claims are still being processed are excluded. Once transferred, individuals, including families with children, can be detained for up to 24 months while awaiting removal to their country of origin or a "safe" third country where they "voluntarily decide to return." The European Commission promised "strong safeguards throughout the entire return process" and insists any agreement requires the host country to respect international human rights standards, including the principle of non-refoulement.

Albania: the prototype nobody talks about

Italy has been running a de facto pilot since October 2024 at Gjadër, a former Soviet airbase in northern Albania's rugged mountains. Under a bilateral deal, the facility operates under Italian legal jurisdiction. Asylum claims are processed there; those issued return orders are, in theory, sent back to Italy for deportation. In practice, according to Davide Colombi of the Center for European Policy Studies, some migrants have been deported directly from Albania, bypassing Italy entirely, a breach of existing legal norms.

Between April and October 2025, 183 people were sent to Gjadër, according to an investigation by Dutch outlet De Correspondent. Most were returned to Italy; five were deported directly to their home countries. Younouse Kone, a 36-year-old Guinean man held there, told journalists that two fellow detainees attempted suicide. "There was nothing, and we had no information, not even about our right to apply for asylum," he said. Giorgia Jana Pintus, an advocate who has visited the site roughly a dozen times alongside European lawmakers, described a sprawling, mostly empty complex far from legal aid, medical care or civil society. "There's a feeling of alienation being there," she said.

The price tag has been extraordinary. The Italian government estimates 670 million euros over five years, roughly seven times the cost of detention in Italy, according to a University of Bari study. Part of the funding was reallocated from disaster relief, education and healthcare budgets. "It was a huge amount of money for not that many people at all," Colombi said.

The shortlist nobody wants to discuss

According to Corriere della Sera, Italy intends to push a shortlist of three countries, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana, as potential return hub hosts. All three have been flagged for ongoing human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, torture and discrimination against minorities and LGBTQ+ people. Other member states have "zoomed in" on the same trio plus Senegal, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Montenegro and Ethiopia. Libya and Tunisia in particular have been documented for grave abuses including torture and family separation.

Bilateral talks are already underway. Austria signed a "mobility agreement" with Uzbekistan in April 2025, laying groundwork for a future hub. Greece is in discussions with two African countries, according to Reuters. In Brussels, a self-selected coordinating group of five, Denmark, Greece, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany, has been hammering out implementation details since breakfast meetings in October 2024. Italy, though not formally part of that group, remains an active driver.

Precedents that should give pause

The United States pioneered third-country deportation agreements. During Donald Trump's first term, deals were pursued with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador; only Guatemala's was formally signed. Under his second term, the US has signed 35 such agreements, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, with countries ranging from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Eswatini, and including noted rights violators such as Libya and El Salvador.

The United Kingdom's 2022 Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda was struck down by the Supreme Court 18 months later; no one was ever sent there. Australia's "PNG Solution" with Papua New Guinea, signed in August 2013, cost roughly $400 million in aid and ended in 2021 after riots on Manus Island killed Iranian asylum seeker Reza Berati and injured more than 60 others. Benham Satah, a Kurdish Iranian refugee who spent years on Manus and witnessed Berati's murder, described conditions as "much worse" than Guantánamo. One detainee developed septicemia and had both legs amputated; he died two days after medical evacuation. Others were denied interpreters and deported to countries where their lives were at risk. "Not knowing when you get out of that hell, that was one of the biggest tortures," Satah said. As of 2025, a handful of people remain in limbo on Manus.

Safeguards on paper, black holes in practice

Critics argue the Return Regulation's human rights clauses are window dressing. Estrella Galan, a Spanish MEP and former director of a refugee resettlement nonprofit, was blunt: "We call them 'European Guantánamos,' because they are financed with our taxes and yet removed from our framework of rights protection. They're black holes where migrants can remain indefinitely without rights." Silvia Carta of the Platform for Undocumented Migrants warned that sending someone to a country they have no connection to "fundamentally breaks the link between the person and any legal system that could protect them. You lose access to lawyers, to courts, to civil society. That's not an accident, that's the point."

Olivia Sundberg of Amnesty International noted a deeper problem: the regulation is not prescriptive. "So much depends on what each government decides to do," she said. Countries once treated as outliers on migration, Austria and Denmark in particular, are now setting the agenda. "They used to be the kids on the naughty list, being told off in school. Now they're very much the mainstream."

Why the return rate argument matters

Supporters lean heavily on a single statistic: only 28 percent of people issued with return orders are actually deported. The figure, cited repeatedly in Brussels, reflects a genuine enforcement gap. But it also obscures why returns fail, lack of readmission agreements, inability to obtain travel documents, legal appeals, and the fact that many countries simply refuse to take back their nationals. Return hubs do not solve these problems; they relocate them. A deportation order executed from Kigali or Kampala still requires the cooperation of the country of origin. If that cooperation is withheld, the migrant sits in the hub, for up to two years.

The January 2027 deadline

The political timetable is aggressive. Meloni and Frederiksen want hubs running by January 2027, less than 18 months away. That means negotiating bilateral agreements, establishing monitoring mechanisms, training staff, building or retrofitting facilities, and resolving the legal status of detainees in countries that may not recognise EU judicial decisions. The Commission has not published a single implementing act. No host country has formally agreed. The European Parliament, which co-legislated the Return Regulation, has not been consulted on the bilateral deals now being negotiated. Meanwhile, the Ceuta crossing has faded from headlines, but the policy it triggered is moving faster than the safeguards meant to contain it.