Five EU countries open the first African camp in Rwanda for deported migrants. Britain previously lost almost a billion dollars on a similar scheme after deporting four people
The initiative became possible following a recent reform of European legislation, but even some leaders of the bloc doubt its effectiveness. In addition, Rwanda itself has been continuously ruled since 1994 by dictator Paul Kagame, who destroyed independent media, brutally suppresses the opposition, and persecutes critics even in exile.
Black migrants arrive on the shores of Italy. 2015. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The governments of Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Greece plan to announce on Monday, November 16, at a meeting in Vienna, the creation in Central Africa of the first center outside the European Union for foreigners who have been denied asylum.
Politico reported that five European nations have finalized an agreement to send migrants to a dedicated deportation hub in Rwanda, citing three sources familiar with the negotiations.
According to information from the InfoMigrants portal, at the initial stage, it will be a pilot project designed for about 100 people—each of the five participating countries will send around 20 migrants to Kigali.
The center is expected to become operational in 2027, although it remains unknown whether the Hope Hostel complex, previously paid for by the United Kingdom, will be used for this purpose.
The authors of the initiative emphasize the key difference between their model and the British one:
they intend to deport to Rwanda not those foreigners whose asylum applications are still pending, but only those who have already received a final rejection, exhausted all legal appeals in Europe, and are required to leave the territory of the European Union.
They will stay at the African center until European authorities organize their departure to their countries of origin.
How EU laws were changed and what role Frontex will receive
The current agreement was made possible thanks to a large-scale revision of EU migration rules. As Deutsche Welle explains, European courts previously regularly blocked attempts to deport migrants to third countries if the individual had no personal connection to that state—such as relatives, language proficiency, or prior residence.
However, on October 16, 2026, the new EU Return Regulation came into force, replacing the 2008 directive and abolishing the requirement for a prior connection to the country of destination if an interstate agreement exists.
The new document also introduced a single European return order: a deportation decision issued by one member state now automatically applies in all others without a review of the case.
In addition, the regulation explicitly permitted the establishment of "return hubs" outside the EU, with the exception of accommodating unaccompanied minors there.
Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris clarified in an interview with ANT1 television that the center is planned to launch in the second half of 2027—just when Athens takes over the presidency of the Council of the EU. According to the minister, these will not be closed prisons, but "open facilities." To avoid human rights lawsuits, the five European countries will independently fund the project and formally retain legal responsibility for the transferred individuals, while planning to involve UN bodies and the International Organization for Migration in monitoring.
Concurrently, the European Commission proposed expanding the powers of the border agency Frontex by establishing a Return Coordination Center within it. If the reform is approved, the agency will be able to organize deportation flights not only from Europe, but also directly from one third country to another—for example, from a hub in Rwanda to the migrant's homeland.
Four volunteers for 966 million dollars: the experience of predecessors
The Hope Hostel in Rwanda's capital Kigali, which was previously prepared to accommodate migrants deported from the UK. Photo: Google Maps
As The New York Times notes, all previous attempts by Western governments to offshore migration procedures ended in legal blocks and multimillion-dollar losses.
The most telling was the British project of 2022–2024, initiated by the Conservative cabinets of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. London planned to forcibly send illegal migrants who crossed the English Channel to Rwanda so their applications could be processed in Africa. In 2023, the UK Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful due to a real risk that Kigali would deport asylum seekers back to countries where their lives would be in danger.
By the time Keir Starmer's Labour government permanently scrapped the program in 2024, British taxpayers had spent £715 million on it—around €835 million, or $966 million. Over the entire duration, only four people left for Rwanda under this scheme, and they did so voluntarily in exchange for a financial payment.
Italy faced similar difficulties when, in 2024 under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, it built two centers in Albania for the expedited processing of migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean. Italian courts immediately blocked this practice, ruling that countries of origin such as Egypt or Bangladesh cannot automatically be deemed safe for all categories of citizens.
As a result, starting in March 2025, Rome repurposed one of the Albanian centers in the town of Gjadër exclusively as a detention facility for men who had already been refused asylum in Italy. Over the course of a year and a half, only about 500 people passed through it, whereas the total cost of the Albanian project through 2028 is estimated at over €670 million, or $775 million.
Denmark also has its own experience: in 2021, Copenhagen passed a law on deporting asylum seekers outside Europe and signed a memorandum with Rwanda, but froze negotiations in early 2023 under pressure from the European Commission, subsequently deciding to act within a coalition with other EU countries. Even earlier, between 2013 and 2018, Israel sent thousands of natives of Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda and Uganda under covert agreements, until the program was partially halted by the Israeli Supreme Court following reports from human rights advocates that deported individuals remained in Africa without legal status or documentation.
"Migration diplomacy" of Paul Kagame
Despite the modest scale of the pilot project, the governments of the five countries view it as the beginning of a broader system. Danish Migration Minister Morten Bødskov stated that Europe "simply needs a way to quickly expel people who have no legal grounds to stay here." And in the coalition agreement of the new Dutch government signed in January 2026, the ultimate goal was explicitly stated as the complete offshoring of the submission and processing of asylum applications outside Europe, so that no such procedure is ever conducted on Dutch territory again.
Within the European Union itself, this approach sparks controversy. Spain and France have previously opposed offshoring migration centers. French President Emmanuel Macron expressed skepticism toward such initiatives this year: "I have never seen a return center in a third country that actually worked." Alberto-Horst Neidhardt, head of the migration programme at the European Policy Centre think tank, believes that deporting several dozen or hundred people will not solve the problem, but serves politicians as an instrument of "political signaling" to voters amid the rising popularity of far-right parties.
Human rights organizations, in turn, warn of the legal vacuum in which deported people risk finding themselves if their countries of origin refuse to take them back.
In a statement by the organization, Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office, called the prospective centers "cruel human rights black holes."
Sjoerd Warmerdam, head of the Dutch refugee assistance organization VluchtelingenWerk, noted that even the Dutch immigration service itself does not consider Rwanda a safe third country, and that independent monitoring there is "virtually impossible."
Clémentine de Montjoye, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, recalled the brutal suppression of dissent in Rwanda, while Dutch MEP Anna Strolenberg, who recently visited Kigali, pointed out that local authorities are willing to accept any proposals from Europeans without adequate security guarantees.
Experts also point to the geopolitical price of the agreement. According to Toni Haastrup, professor of global politics at the University of Manchester, for Rwandan President Paul Kagame, such deals with the West and the US are a means of bolstering international status and a lever of influence over the European Union.
As early as September 2025, the European Parliament urged the European Commission to review financial aid to Rwandan state institutions due to torture, arbitrary detentions, and military support for the M23 rebel group in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, the reliance of European governments on migration cooperation with Kigali, analysts note, will make any criticism directed at the Rwandan authorities significantly more difficult.