EU Return Hubs Hit Albania Wall

The EU is putting legal shape on an idea that has been circling European politics for years: holding rejected asylum seekers outside the Union before sending them home. The proposed Return Regulation, now in trilogue, the three-way talks between the Commission, Parliament and Council that settle final EU law, would allow member states to transfer failed applicants to "return hubs" in non-EU countries. The only working example, Italy's centres in Albania, has processed roughly 1.5% of its stated target.

Two instruments, one direction

The Return Regulation, tabled in March 2025, would replace the 2008 Return Directive, the existing EU rulebook for deporting people with no right to stay. That Directive set minimum standards but left enforcement largely to national systems. The result was 27 different ways of handling the same problem. A Regulation is stronger: it applies directly and uniformly across the Union, without each country writing it into national law (Solidar).

The key lever is Article 17, which creates a legal basis for detention facilities on non-EU soil (Verfassungsblog). The European Parliament backed it in March 2026 by 389 to 206 (Euronews). Trilogue talks broke off on 20 May without agreement. The next round is due on 1 June (NAMPA/AFP).

Six days earlier, all 46 members of the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights body and a separate institution from the EU, adopted the Chișinău Declaration. It does not change the European Convention on Human Rights. It says Convention protections, including the ban on torture and the right to family life, should not automatically stop deportations once national courts have examined the risks (AP, BIICL). The Commission welcomed both moves as "consistent" with its migration agenda (EU Perspectives). The Regulation would build the operating system. The Declaration narrows the judicial space in which it might be challenged.

What Albania actually shows

Italy's detention centres in Albania are the live test case. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced the protocol in 2023 with a target of 36,000 transfers per year. By April 2026, Italy's National Ombudsman, the Garante nazionale, an independent oversight body, counted 192 people who had passed through the facilities, with 56 deported (Pagella Politica). Even the Italian government's own figure of 536 transfers comes to 1.5% of the annual goal. The five-year budget is roughly €670 million.

The practical problem is even more awkward. Every deportation from the Albanian centres requires the person to be brought back to Italy first, because direct deportation from Albanian soil is not legally permitted. The hubs do not shorten the process. They add another stage to it. Italian courts blocked the scheme in October 2024 as incompatible with EU law. The government answered with a decree recasting the centres from asylum-processing sites as deportation holding facilities. Albania's foreign minister has said the protocol will not be extended beyond 2030 (La Notizia Giornale).

The real bottleneck

Across the EU, only about 28% of return orders are carried out. That is a record high, but it still means seven in ten people ordered to leave do not leave (Eurostat). The blockage is diplomatic rather than logistical: countries of origin often refuse to take their nationals back. France issued roughly 156,000 return orders in 2025 and executed fewer than 15,000 (Le Figaro). Germany deported 4,807 people in the first quarter of 2026, down 22% year on year, even though its interior minister has made return hubs his signature policy (Stern).

No third country has signed an agreement to host a hub. France says it will not take part, citing constitutional constraints. The French Senate concluded that the mechanism "risks undermining procedural guarantees" while solving the wrong problem (French Senate).

The EU Court of Justice has not yet ruled on whether offshore detention fits within EU law. An Advocate General's opinion, a non-binding legal recommendation to the court, opened the door in principle in April but drew a clear distinction between Italy's current arrangement and the wider hubs model the Regulation would create (EU Law Analysis). The full ruling, expected later this year, could limit the framework before any hub opens.

The Albania precedent shows a large legal machine aimed at the wrong blockage. The hard part is persuading origin countries to cooperate. That has not moved.