Overall, the discussion on return hubs may cost a lot of political energy while having little real impact. The negotiations of the EP and Council may concentrate on other, more useful aspects of reforming the EU's return directive.

3) A policy such as return hubs may turn out to be expensive while effectively targeting only a relatively small number of migrants.

2) there are tight human rights concerns what may be allowed legally (with the Italy-Albanian deal being a testimony of this);

1) third countries tend to face stiff domestic opposition against externalized EU migration policies in their territory; Cooperating on deportation policies is often framed as a betrayal of the interest of the own citizens.

How will the new Commission plan change the picture? The EU will get new legal possibilities to engage with third countries yet the overarching dynamic may remain comparable:

Here is the link to the open access publication: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

In a project gathering the EU's return data with every country of the world, we show that the EU's return rate has actually decreased with most third countries, with the exception of the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. Readmission agreements and more EU conditionality did not change much.