Ioannides said the protection of human rights will be a “yardstick” for the agreements, and the EU wants international organizations such as the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. refugee agency to help make sure the rules are upheld.
Uphill battle
The EU is falling prey to “populist rhetoric” and “alternative facts” about migrants, said Jean-Nicolas Beuze, UNHCR’s representative in Brussels. Refugees ran “the risk of being sent to a country” where they could “suffer irreparable harm,” he told POLITICO.
Some countries, including France and Spain, have challenged the scheme. “I have never seen a return center in a third country that actually works,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in Brussels last week, adding, “I’m not sure that’s what our Europe is about.”
Greens MEP Mélissa Camara, who was her group’s lead negotiator on the EU’s new migration rules, told POLITICO that establishing return hubs outside the bloc’s borders “breaches the EU core values of dignity and compliance with fundamental rights.”
“By creating such hubs in Uzbekistan or Rwanda, we will therefore have no guarantee at all the human rights are complied with,” she added.
Under the new EU rules — which were passed in the European Parliament to chants of “send them home” from right-wing and far-right MEPs — the return hubs would house people who have already exhausted all their legal avenues to stay in the bloc and are awaiting deportation.
That differs from earlier offshore migration plans in Britain, Denmark and Italy, which focused on asylum seekers or newly arrived migrants. Those efforts struggled to gain traction: Italy’s Albania centers have been tied up in litigation, Denmark’s Rwanda plans stalled, and Britain’s Rwanda scheme was abandoned after years of legal challenges.
Gerardo Fortuna, Nick Vinocur and Max Griera contributed to this report.