Africa: Europe Is Spending Billions On Deporting Migrants. Why the Strategy Isn't Working

For over a decade, the European Union (EU) has relied on external partnerships to increase the return of migrants who don't have the right to stay in Europe. It has used a growing web of funding instruments, projects and bilateral arrangements to get countries in Africa and the Middle East to cooperate in its bid to send migrants back to their home countries.

Its policies have included incentives such as the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, the Facility for Refugees in Türkiye and the Neighbourhood Development and International Cooperation Instrument.

Billions of euros have been channelled into migration-related projects.

Incentives have been accompanied by coercion. The EU wields the revised Visa Code (Article 25a) as a lever, allowing the European Commission to impose visa restrictions on countries that don't cooperate.

Alongside this financial and diplomatic leverage, the EU has invested heavily in enforcement infrastructure to increase returns. This includes border equipment, biometric databases, detention capacity and operational support through Frontex, the European border and coast guard agency.

The approach has been dubbed the EU's externalisation strategy. It assumes that financial incentives can buy cooperation and that enforcement infrastructure can convert political agreements into actual returns.

In Africa, the EU has used funding primarily as a containment tool, while in the Middle East it has been a way to share the burden of the Syrian crisis. Neither model has produced the desired cooperation.

We are policy leader fellows at the European University Institute's Florence School of Transnational Governance. Building on previous research on EU return and readmission governance, our latest policy brief examines whether the EU's policies have led to sustained cooperation on returns from Africa and the Middle East. We drew on Eurostat returns data, EU spending records and the European Migration Network.

The short answer: it hasn't. Return rates remain below 10% across most of Africa. In the Middle East, only a small number of states cooperate meaningfully. Our research confirms that return rates follow regional structural dynamics more than they respond to readmission agreements or funding levels.

We found that financial leverage and enforcement infrastructure have contributed to a more transactional and short-term approach. Cooperation is often negotiated case by case and dependent on short-term political bargaining.

Based on the evidence from our research, we argue that more funding on returns and readmissions will have limited e