Can Europe's return hubs work without breaking its own human rights rules?

The EU has approved a legal basis for sending people with no right to stay to centres outside the bloc. Governments say rights will be respected. Rights groups warn the safeguards on paper may not hold up in practice. EU home affairs ministers gave their final approval to a new Return Regulation in Luxembourg on October 1. The regulation replaces the 2008 Return Directive and includes a legal framework for "return hubs" in non-EU countries. What governments say The Council of the EU presents the rules as a way to make returns work. Ireland's Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Jim O'Callaghan, whose country holds the presidency, pointed to the gap between decisions and departures. "Around two in three people ordered to leave the EU do not actually leave. The revised return rules adopted today will help member states implement swift returns effectively." The Council says the rules complement the Migration and Asylum Pact and that all return measures must respect fundamental rights. They set obligations on people with no right to stay, who must leave and cooperate with authorities. Non-compliance can bring sanctions from reduced benefits to financial penalties. People posing a security risk can face an indefinite entry ban or detention beyond 24 months, where justified and proportionate. A European Return Order lets states recognise one another's return decisions, voluntarily at first, with a reassessment after three years. Hubs require an agreement or arrangement with a non-EU country that respects international human rights standards and the principle of non-refoulement. Unaccompanied minors are excluded. Separately, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Greece, and the Netherlands are pursuing a joint hub in Africa. Greece's migration minister, Thanos Plevris, said the aim is to open a facility in 2027. Rwanda is reported as a possible frontrunner. A promise on paper Human rights NGOs worry whether the rights guaranteed in the EU can be enforced once a person has left the bloc’s territory. Marta Welander, EU Advocacy Director at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), has no doubts. "The proposed idea of return hubs is cruel, costly and counterproductive,” she told Euronews. "No amount of additional funding, training or monitoring design changes the fact that a transferred person's protection would depend entirely on a state outside the EU's legal reach, so proper oversight, rights to appeal and protection from refoulement cannot be guaranteed the way they can be inside EU jurisdiction," Welander continued. Chiara Catelli, Advocacy Officer at PICUM, said that "no safeguard can make deportation centres a legitimate tool to manage migration." She argues that the transfer itself is a rights issue. "The very fact of sending people to places they don't even know, far from the life they were trying to build, goes against the right to private and family life." The gaps in the text Catelli points to what the regulation doesn’t include. "The Return Regulation doesn't say anything about living conditions or timeframes for detention in the return hubs, nor who will monitor the respect of and enforce any safeguards." The Council's description confirms that details are left to individual deals, like an "agreement or arrangement." This is where the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Michael O'Flaherty, objected. In letters published in July to the five countries pursuing the joint initiative, he called for four guardrails. These include a risk assessment before any hub opens, independent and continuous monitoring with the power to suspend cooperation, legally binding agreements with enforceable human rights clauses, and publication of agreements and findings so parliaments and courts can scrutinise them. These are his recommendations, not clauses of the regulation. Welander doubts that monitoring is realistic. "It is hard to see how effective monitoring could work in a third country where the EU has no courts, no jurisdiction and no enforcement power at all." The IRC points to Italy's detention centres in Albania, often described as a blueprint for return hubs, which it has visited twice. "What has been witnessed in Albania includes widespread psychological distress among those detained without proper mental health care, including extremely troubling reports of self-harm." Who is responsible? Catelli says responsibility cannot be handed over along with the detainees. "What is clear is that the EU and its member states cannot just outsource their responsibility to protect people's fundamental rights, or to prevent and address violations, especially when those violations are a direct consequence of policies they have put in place." UN human rights chief Volker Türk made the same point after Parliament adopted the text in June. "EU States cannot simply outsource their human rights obligations to third States in this context." Welander argues the real bottleneck lies elsewhere. "A major factor behind slow returns is third countries' willingness to cooperate on readmission and document verification - this is widely cited as a bigger constraint than coordination at EU level." Rights groups do not dispute that the rules apply. They dispute if the new powers can uphold them in practice. With no host country confirmed, the answer will emerge from the agreements governments sign, and from whether those agreements are made public. The "safe third country" label carries much of the weight, and Catelli says it should not. "A country could be considered safe by the EU and still be unsafe for certain people, depending on their individual circumstances."