EU Discovers Outsourcing Works Better Than Actual Returns – Macron Suddenly Remembers European Values

The European Parliament passed the new Return Regulation on 17 June 2026 by 418 votes to 218.

The text explicitly permits the creation of hubs outside the EU for people who have received final removal orders but cannot be returned to their country of origin.

These facilities may serve as the final destination or as transfer points for the fabled onward removal.

Nineteen of the twenty-seven member states had already signed a letter at the June summit requesting that the EU budget help finance the new model.

Germany is leading the working group, joined by Austria, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has set the target of concluding concrete agreements with third countries before the end of the year. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has gone further, saying he wants the first deals signed in 2026 so that the hubs can be operational by 2027.

Remigration Realities

Current effective return rates stand at approximately 20–28 %.

In 2024, EU member states issued around 453,000 orders to leave but carried out roughly 110,000 actual returns to third countries. The new regulation is presented as the tool that will finally close this gap.

Italy has already tested a version of the concept.

Its centres in Albania, opened in late 2024, were initially intended for asylum processing but were largely empty after repeated blocks by Italian courts. In 2025 the facilities were repurposed to hold people already subject to removal orders inside Italy.

The model is now cited at EU level as proof that third-country solutions are feasible.

Did paying Turkey work?

The 2016 EU-Turkey statement provides the clearest precedent.

Under that arrangement Turkey agreed to prevent irregular crossings to the Greek islands and to take back certain migrants.

In exchange the EU committed €6 billion in dedicated migration funding between 2016 and 2019, with total EU support to refugees and host communities in Turkey since 2011 reaching approximately €12.4 billion.

Actual returns from Greece to Turkey under the agreement, however, remained miniscule - around 2,140 people in total. Turkey has periodically reminded the EU of its leverage by threatening to suspend cooperation.

In February 2020 President Erdoğan announced he would no longer stop migrants from crossing into Europe and directed thousands toward the Greek border at Evros. Greece suspended asylum procedures and deployed force to prevent entry. The standoff lasted several weeks before the flow was again brought under control.

Turkish officials have repeatedly linked continued cooperation to further financial support, progress on visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens, and updates to the customs union.

On multiple occasions President Erdoğan has threatened to “open the gates” and send millions of refugees toward Europe if the EU failed to meet its commitments. These warnings have usually been followed by renewed negotiations and additional funding discussions.

The 2016 statement also introduced a one-for-one resettlement scheme specifically for Syrians.

For every Syrian returned from the Greek islands to Turkey, the EU committed to resettling one Syrian refugee from Turkey into the Union. In practice the mechanism delivered very limited results. Turkey continues to host more than three million Syrian refugees, by far the largest such population of any country.

Can the EU send people back to Syria?

Syria has so far shown only modest interest in taking back large numbers of its citizens from Europe. Recent attempts to advance remigration arrangements have run into what EU officials describe as technical difficulties, most notably Damascus’s limited willingness to issue the travel documents required for repatriation.

Public statements from the Syrian side have made it abundantly clear that any significant returns would first require substantial European funding for reconstruction.

The EU is currently home to roughly 1.5 million Syrians with some form of protection status. There have also been multiple documented cases of people entering Europe on false Syrian documents or with links to designated groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Why is France objecting now?

France has now made clear it will not support the use of EU budget money for the new hubs. President Emmanuel Macron stated at the June summit that there is a “No to return centers” from France because he neither believes they are efficient nor that they correspond to European principles. He added that he has never seen a return centre in a third country operate successfully and that he is “not sure that this is our Europe.”

France itself hosts several million Muslims, the largest such population in the European Union, many of them from North and sub-Saharan Africa. The country has seen repeated episodes of large-scale urban unrest, including in and around Paris, alongside ongoing challenges with integration, parallel societies, and Islamist radicalisation that have been documented for years.

At the same time, France continues to receive substantial numbers of new asylum seekers and irregular migrants.

Schengen

Once migrants are legalized in one EU country, Schengen rules allow them to move freely to other member states - most commonly the high-welfare countries such as Austria, Germany and Sweden. Sweden, after years of very generous policies, has now begun closing the door.

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What does actual leverage look like? - the US vs EU strategy

By contrast, the United States under the current administration has secured faster cooperation on deportations through direct economic pressure. Threats of tariffs, visa restrictions on officials, and the use of military aircraft for removal flights have produced rapid agreements with several Latin American governments.

Colombia, for example, reversed an initial refusal to accept deportees after facing the prospect of 25-50 % tariffs on its exports. The US has also concluded third-country deportation arrangements with more than two dozen nations. These measures operate under a single executive authority able to impose immediate costs on non-cooperative states.

The European Union, by comparison, has spent decades sending billions in development aid, migration partnerships and humanitarian funding to countries across Africa, the Middle East and the Western Balkans. Return rates have nevertheless remained low.

The European Union, over the past ten years, has transferred well over €150 billion in development aid, migration partnerships, humanitarian funding and trust funds to countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Western Balkans.

The bloc continues to rely on positive conditionality, more money, more frameworks and more “partnerships” while refusing to apply any meaningful pressure on non-cooperative states.

The main spending lines include:

• Turkey: More than €12 billion since 2011, including the €6 billion dedicated under the 2016 EU-Turkey migration deal. This was supposed to secure cooperation on returns and border control.
• Africa: Approximately €5 billion through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), created specifically to reduce migration. Additional tens of billions have flowed through the NDICI-Global Europe instrument (2021–2027) and its predecessors for migration management, border security and development projects in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. NDICI only listing €79.5 billion in total.
• Western Balkans and Neighbourhood: Several billion euros in migration-related funding, including border management projects, readmission support and capacity building.
• Humanitarian and development aid: Billions more through the EU humanitarian budget (ECHO) and general development instruments, much of it justified with migration control objectives.

When adding up all channels - EU institutions, trust funds, humanitarian aid, and migration-specific partnerships - the total amount transferred to these regions over the last decade runs well into the hundreds of billions of euros.

After a decade of sending well over a 150 billion euros in taxpayer money to third countries and building endless "partnerships", those same "partners" still refuse to take back their own citizens in any meaningful numbers.

The response from Brussels and most member states is to now build and fund return hubs in those countries and extend the funding even further.

After years of throwing money at the problem with almost nothing to show for it, the European Union has discovered the one WORKING strategy - paying MORE.

One has to wonder - with all the hundreds of billions spent on external partnerships, migration deals, outsourcing, Ukraine warmongering, how much actual progress could Europe have made if it had instead focused on cutting bureaucracy, lowering taxes and regulations, and letting its own people and companies innovate and grow?