The incoming EU deal will “give impetus” to those plans, Cyprus’ Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides told reporters in the run-up to a meeting of justice and home affairs ministers last week, saying that he expects more countries, including his own, to start discussing the topic.
“Now that we’ve got the legal basis, we believe that we’ll get some flesh on the bones in the coming months,” he added.
Ioannides said the “general idea” is to set up return hubs “maybe in Africa or Asia” but “not close to European borders.”
Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and Greece have had regular discussions on return hubs, with Germany and the Netherlands saying they will have plans in place by the end of the year.
Nordic countries are also looking into setting up a pilot scheme, Sweden’s Minister of Migration Johan Forssell told POLITICO. One idea would be to use the deportation hubs for “one specific nationality,” he said.
There hasn’t been a decision on which nationality that would be, but “we are more or less facing the same kind of problems when it comes to specific countries,” said Forssell. He mentioned Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia as examples of countries to which the Nordic states — and the EU as a whole — struggle to return people.