Europe Moves to Outsource Returns as Rwanda and Uganda Near Migration Deals

Europe is moving closer to a new model for dealing with migrants who have no legal right to remain in the EU: instead of returning them directly to their countries of origin, member states could transfer them to designated facilities in third countries.

Rwanda and Uganda are emerging as the leading African candidates for the first such “return hubs”. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece are accelerating negotiations, with ministers from the five countries due to meet in Copenhagen on September 4 to discuss the next steps. The goal is to reach agreements that could allow the first transfers in 2027.

The shift is significant because it moves European migration policy beyond the traditional logic of return. The EU has spent years trying to increase the number of people who leave after receiving an order to do so, but enforcement remains one of the weakest points in the bloc’s migration system. In 2025, the EU return rate was around 28%, the highest of the previous decade but still far from the level governments would need for return decisions to function as an effective policy tool.

Uganda emerges as the frontrunner

According to reporting from Greece, negotiations with Uganda have progressed further than those with other potential host countries. The proposed arrangement would involve financial compensation for Kampala, while a first facility could become operational in 2027. Technical teams from the five European countries are expected to travel to Africa by the end of August.

The model would target people who have exhausted their asylum procedures or otherwise have a final decision requiring them to leave an EU member state. Instead of being immediately returned to their country of origin, they could be transferred to a facility in Uganda, where arrangements for their eventual return would be organised.

The idea is not entirely new. The Netherlands and Uganda signed a letter of intent in September 2025 concerning cooperation on returns, envisaging temporary accommodation in Uganda for certain migrants whose removal directly from the Netherlands was not possible. The Dutch government later abandoned that particular arrangement after its political transition, but interest in the broader concept of return hubs remained.

Uganda is therefore being considered not simply as a geographical location but as part of a broader attempt to build a European return infrastructure outside the bloc.

Rwanda brings infrastructure and political experience

Rwanda has a different advantage: it already has experience hosting migrants and asylum seekers transferred from other countries.

Since 2019, more than 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers have been transferred to Rwanda from Libya through the UN-backed Emergency Transit Mechanism. Many were subsequently resettled in other countries. Rwanda also prepared infrastructure under its controversial agreement with the United Kingdom to receive asylum seekers, although the British government ultimately abandoned that scheme.

That history makes Kigali an attractive option for European governments looking for a country where an externalised migration system could be established relatively quickly.

But Rwanda's previous experience also illustrates the political and legal risks. The UK's proposed Rwanda asylum scheme was ultimately cancelled after Britain's Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Rwanda could not be considered a safe third country under the circumstances of the agreement. The European Parliamentary Research Service notes that the UN refugee agency had also warned that the scheme was incompatible with international refugee law.

The new European plans would therefore have to operate under a substantially different legal framework.

A new EU return system is taking shape

The return hubs are being developed alongside a broader overhaul of the EU's return policy. In June, the Council and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on new rules intended to make returns faster and more effective. The framework provides for cooperation with third countries and allows the creation of return hubs outside the EU, provided that the necessary agreements and fundamental-rights safeguards are in place.

Under the agreed framework, a person with a return decision could potentially be transferred to a third country that is not their country of origin. Such an arrangement would require an agreement with the host country, which would have to meet international human-rights standards. Unaccompanied minors would be excluded from transfers to third countries, while families with children could still fall within the system under certain conditions.

This distinction matters because the concept is not simply about building detention facilities abroad. The legal architecture will determine who can be transferred, under what conditions, for how long and what safeguards exist if the person challenges the decision.

The legal problem is bigger than the geography

The central challenge for the return-hub model is that moving a person outside the EU does not remove European governments from their legal obligations.

The European Parliamentary Research Service has warned that return hubs could generate substantial legal challenges. EU member states remain bound by the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits sending people to places where they face persecution, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. European human-rights law also requires individual assessments of the risks faced by people being removed.

This creates a difficult question for governments: how much responsibility can be transferred to a host country without transferring the legal and political risk along with it?

The answer will also depend on monitoring. European institutions and rights organisations have raised concerns that people held outside EU territory could become harder to protect and that oversight could be weaker once migrants leave European jurisdiction. The European Parliament's research service specifically identifies human-rights monitoring, accountability and the possibility of court challenges as major unresolved issues.

The deterrence argument remains unproven

European governments are betting on two effects. The first is administrative: if migrants who cannot stay in Europe can be moved to a third country, governments may be able to enforce more return decisions. The second is political: the existence of return hubs could discourage people from making irregular journeys to Europe if reaching the EU no longer guarantees the possibility of remaining there while return procedures drag on.

The evidence from previous offshore migration schemes is far less clear.

The European Parliamentary Research Service points to Australia's offshore processing system as an example of the enormous financial and administrative costs associated with transferring migrants to third countries. It also notes that previous attempts to externalise asylum processing have involved relatively small numbers of people and generated extensive legal and political controversy.

That raises a structural problem for Europe's new approach. The EU's return deficit is not caused only by a lack of physical facilities. Returns often fail because countries of origin refuse to accept their nationals, identities cannot be established, legal challenges remain unresolved or migrants cannot safely be returned.

A hub in Uganda or Rwanda can change the location of a person waiting for removal. It cannot, by itself, solve the diplomatic problem of persuading another government to accept that person.

Europe is testing how far externalisation can go

The importance of Rwanda and Uganda therefore goes beyond the two countries themselves. They are becoming test cases for a broader European attempt to externalise migration enforcement.

If the five-country initiative succeeds, other EU governments are likely to have a model they can replicate. If negotiations collapse under legal, financial or operational pressure, the experiment could instead demonstrate the limits of outsourcing returns.

The September meeting in Copenhagen will offer an early indication of which direction Europe is heading. The governments involved are no longer discussing return hubs as an abstract policy idea. They are working towards locations, agreements, infrastructure and a timetable for actual transfers.