A German study warns against outsourcing migration defence to third countries. However, the EU is now also open to externalisation. Abolish Frontex is planning to protest.
The German government continues to withhold a report on asylum procedures outsourced to third countries, reports the German public broadcaster ARD, quoting from an apparently leaked draft. The report advises against Germany going it alone, according to ‘Tagesschau’. Twenty-three national and international experts were consulted. Several of them expressed their annoyance at the delay in publication.
The report, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, examines the possibility of following European law and transferring certain groups of people seeking protection to supposedly safe third countries. The so-called Rwanda model was of interest, for example, in which the UK wanted to bring people to the East African country for their asylum procedure and, if necessary, subsequent protection. The ministry also dealt with Italy’s plans to bring certain boat migrants to Albania – however, national courts put a stop to this and asked the European Court of Justice for clarification.
The German report therefore also concludes that there are ‘considerable practical challenges and hurdles in some cases’ for the various third-country models. Accordingly, there are also ‘certain legal risks’. The third country concept could at best be ‘one of many building blocks for migration management’, the report explains.
Andreas Grünewald, Migration Officer at the German charity Bread for the World, therefore appeals to the incoming German government not to pursue such a misguided concept. ‘This lack of courage to take the results of the review process into account is keeping a debate simmering that won’t get us an inch closer to solving migration policy challenges,’ Grünewald, who was also consulted as an expert for the report, told “nd”. The outsourcing of asylum procedures ‘ties up an incredible amount of resources, harms global refugee protection – and makes us dependent on questionable governments,’ he criticised.
The document goes on to say that only a few states in relevant regions would even be considered for a third country model. In addition, there is ‘no evidence to date’ that any governments outside the EU would even be willing to negotiate. The African Union also made it clear in 2021 that it strictly rejects the outsourcing of asylum procedures to African countries. Should talks nevertheless take place, the draft report recommends that they be held jointly at European level.
According to European law, refugees may currently only be sent to a country to which they have a ‘connection’. However, the German report opens a door here: this restriction is not prescribed by international law and restricts ‘political room for manoeuvre’, it says.
In fact, the abolition of this so-called connection element has long been discussed at European level. This also plays a role in a draft for the renewal of the EU Return Directive, which the new EU Commission under Ursula von der Leyen’s second term of office presented with its Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner on 11 March. It proposes the establishment of ‘return hubs’ in non-EU countries to which rejected asylum seekers can be brought. The alleged aim of these ‘return hubs’ is to increase the rate of actual deportations, as currently only around 20 per cent of those obliged to leave the EU do so.
Social Democrats, the Left and the Greens in the European Parliament have announced that they will oppose the plan. Solidarity refugee organisations have described the proposal as ‘absurd and inhumane’ and warned of possible human rights violations.
Resistance to the planned tightening of European asylum policy is also forming on the streets. The Abolish Frontex network is planning a transnational day of action against a further tightening of the EU migration pact on 10 April. The activists criticise that the Commission’s new legislative proposal from March 2025 is an instrument to ‘organise and legitimise a cruel system of tracking, filtering, exploiting, detaining and deporting people’. It effectively abolishes the right to asylum in Europe, Abolis Frontex explains.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: The port of Shëngjin in Albania, where Italy brought refugees and was stopped by the courts (Albinfo, Shëngjin, CC BY-SA 2.5).
