Five European interior and migration ministers agreed in Copenhagen on September 4 on a common model for offshore return hubs, aiming to seal a first partnership with a non-EU country around the New Year and to begin transferring rejected asylum seekers who cannot be sent home in 2027.

The Group of Five — Denmark, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Greece — cast the meeting as a move from political debate to operational design. Danish Immigration and Integration Minister Morten Bødskov said the guiding principle is readiness to transfer the first irregular migrants to a partner country outside the European Union in 2027. German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the group wants an agreement with third countries this year that would enable the hubs. Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner framed the shared goal as "pushing illegal migration towards zero." Dutch Asylum and Migration Minister Bart van den Brink and Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris joined the talks. The five plan to meet again in Munich at the end of September.

Ministers Spell Out Ambition And Guardrails

Under the model described in Copenhagen, people whose asylum claims have been refused, and who cannot be returned to their countries of origin, would be moved to facilities on the territory of one or more partner states while awaiting deportation or further processing.

Bødskov told reporters the hubs would not be "a prison" or "a detention camp," arguing that partner countries would give irregular migrants a "new chance." That characterization is a ministerial claim; rights advocates dispute it. Ministers said the five states would fully finance the hubs and could add commercial partnerships or other incentives.

They also said the project would proceed in partnership with the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration and in line with EU and international law — assertions rights groups treat with skepticism. A UNHCR spokesperson has said the agency had not been approached with details of a proposal and could not comment on arrangements under discussion.

Dobrindt said technical talks with countries outside the EU were under way but named no partners. Plevris described discussions with potential hosts as "becoming deeper and more fruitful."

Partner Countries Remain Unofficial

No host has been formally designated. Public reporting has repeatedly pointed to Uganda and Rwanda as leading candidates; Uzbekistan has also been mentioned in diplomatic accounts. Representatives of the five visited Kigali in late August. Earlier Dutch contacts with Uganda reportedly stalled over concerns about LGBTQ rights and broader human-rights conditions. Kigali has described contacts as preliminary and said no agreement has been reached.

Officials stress that any deal would rest on equal and mutually beneficial partnerships, with missions planned to assess whether candidate countries meet standards the group has set. Critics note that both Uganda and Rwanda face long-standing scrutiny over political rights, detention practices, and the treatment of vulnerable groups — issues that complicated earlier externalization schemes.

EU Law Precedents And Cost Questions

The Copenhagen push sits inside a wider tightening of EU return policy. The European Parliament approved a strict migration package in June that allows member states to establish return hubs through agreements with third countries, provided human-rights standards, including non-refoulement, are respected. A related return regulation is expected to advance in the autumn. Nineteen EU governments backed the hub concept in a June letter to EU leaders, calling it an innovative tool for migration management.

Earlier experiments offer cautionary numbers. Italy’s centers in Albania were projected to handle roughly 3,000 people a month; accounts since their conversion into deportation facilities in March 2025 put total throughput near 500, at a cost above €670 million. An Italian university study concluded the arrangement has been more expensive than hosting people on Italian soil. The United Kingdom abandoned its Rwanda asylum scheme after legal defeat and a change of government. Denmark dropped a national Rwanda-style plan in 2023 in favor of a coordinated European approach.

Rights Warnings And Political Split

Civil-society groups and European rights bodies have condemned the hub model. Michele LeVoy, director of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, said sending people to deportation centers outside the EU means uprooting children, adults, and families from lives built in Europe and subjecting them to prolonged detention in places they do not know.

The Council of Europe has warned that return hubs pose considerable risks to fundamental rights and has urged concrete, enforceable safeguards — independent monitoring, binding human-rights clauses, and public scrutiny — before any transfers begin.

French and Spanish leaders have separately criticized hubs as ineffective, underscoring a split between governments pressing to externalize returns and those that see the approach as legally fragile and operationally unproven. Whether a named partner emerges by year’s end, and whether first transfers in 2027 survive court challenges and partner-country politics, will be clearer after the Munich meeting and the autumn fight over the return regulation.