The Safe Country Framework and Its Contradictions
The agreements reached in mid-December between the Council and the European Parliament mark more than a procedural update to EU asylum law. They signal a structural reorientation of European migration governance, one in which restrictive national experiments are no longer treated as legal outliers but reframed as scalable policy solutions.
The new framework operates through three mechanisms: an EU-wide list of countries considered safe for returns, broader grounds for rejecting asylum applications without full examination, and authorisation for processing centres outside EU territory.
Italy’s protocol with Albania exemplifies this shift. The arrangement established detention facilities on Albanian territory to process asylum seekers intercepted at sea. Courts have repeatedly blocked transfers, and operational results remain minimal. Yet the protocol has been elevated from a contested national experiment to a reference model for European reform.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi’s claim that the agreements vindicate Italy’s approach is not without foundation. Offshore processing, accelerated border procedures, and the externalisation of protection responsibilities have moved from the margins of EU debate into its regulatory core.
The Politics of “Safe Countries”
Central to the new framework is the introduction of an EU-wide list of “safe countries of origin”, countries deemed to generally respect human rights and offer protection from persecution, including Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco, and Tunisia. The designation allows member states to apply accelerated procedures at the border, compressing timelines and limiting access to legal assistance. Applicants from the listed countries are presumed unlikely to qualify for protection, effectively reversing the traditional burden of proof that underpins refugee law.
In principle, inclusion on the list requires evidence of general safety and respect for fundamental rights. However, in practice, the application of these criteria appears politically elastic. Egypt qualifies despite well-documented patterns of repression; Bangladesh is included notwithstanding credible reports of persecution against religious minorities. The determining logic seems less grounded in human rights assessment than in migration management priorities.
In the Italian case, courts have repeatedly highlighted this tension. Transfers of asylum seekers to Albania were blocked on the basis that EU law requires individualised assessment of protection needs. The government’s response was to incorporate the safe countries list directly into domestic law through legislative decree, thereby attempting to override judicial scrutiny by transforming a political determination into a binding legal standard. The consequence is significant: an assessment that judges previously conducted on a case-by-case basis, determining whether a country could be considered genuinely safe for a particular applicant, has been replaced by a fixed legislative presumption, thereby limiting judicial discretion. The recent EU agreement now extends this approach to the continental level, institutionalising practices that domestic judiciaries had previously called into question and potentially limiting the scope for national courts to apply individualised protection assessments.
Externalisation as Responsibility Displacement
The revised rules on safe third countries represent a qualitative expansion of grounds for inadmissibility. Under current EU law, an asylum application can be rejected as inadmissible if the applicant transited through a country considered safe and could have sought protection there. The new framework significantly broadens this: an application may now be rejected simply because protection “could have been” sought in a safe third country, even if the applicant never actually passed through that country or has no meaningful connection to it. Member states may then transfer both the applicant and responsibility for examining their claim to that third country, effectively delegating their protection obligations to states outside the EU.
This marks a shift from burden-sharing to responsibility displacement. The countries likely to be designated as safe third countries, such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey, do not possess asylum systems comparable to those of EU member states. They face their own migration pressures and operate within constrained legal and institutional environments.
Crucially, the EU cannot unilaterally enforce such transfers. The framework presupposes bilateral agreements with third countries, yet no comprehensive agreements currently exist with most potential partners. Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey have shown limited willingness to assume responsibility for examining asylum applications on Europe’s behalf. The legal mechanism thus depends entirely on diplomatic arrangements that remain largely hypothetical, creating a regulatory architecture built on cooperation that has yet to materialise.
The concept of “return hubs” extends this logic further. Under the new framework, asylum procedures and detention could be conducted in third countries pending deportation. Once again, the Italy-Albania protocol functions as the reference point. However, after more than a year of operation, the centres have processed only 111 people (from October 2024 to July 2025), with all transfers repeatedly stalled by judicial intervention. The first group of 16 migrants sent in October 2024 was returned to Italy within days. Subsequent transfers in January and April 2025 faced similar court-ordered returns. The Gjader facility, one of two detention centres built in Albania under Italian jurisdiction, remains largely unused despite projected costs exceeding €830 million over five years.
Analysts have raised further doubts on the effectiveness of such measures as deterrence against illegal migration. Individuals fleeing conflict or persecution respond primarily to immediate threats, not distant procedural arrangements. Restrictive policies tend to reshape the conditions of arrival rather than significantly reduce the overall phenomenon.
Returns, Capacity, and Structural Constraints
The new returns regulation seeks to address the persistent gap between removal orders and actual deportations. European leaders frequently point to the fact that a significant proportion of individuals ordered to leave the EU remain within its territory as a core problem. The proposed remedies, such as longer detention periods, extended entry bans, and stricter obligations imposed on irregular migrants, prioritise enforcement over feasibility. Once again, Italy illustrates the structural limits of this approach.
Its deportation rate hovers around 10%, not primarily because of insufficient detention capacity but due to absent readmission agreements, diplomatic resistance from countries of origin unwilling to accept their nationals, and legal barriers, including appeals processes and prohibitions on returning individuals to countries where they face persecution or serious harm. Expanding detention infrastructure without resolving these constraints risks increasing the number of individuals held in prolonged legal limbo, at high financial and social cost.
The introduction of a European Return Order, a mechanism allowing any EU member state to enforce another state’s deportation decision, within the Schengen Information System, further complicates this picture. This is distinct from the asylum regulation itself; it addresses what happens after asylum claims are rejected. Once operational in June 2026, it will facilitate mutual recognition of return decisions and the resumption of Dublin transfers. Italy, as a primary country of entry, will likely face increased inflows while its own return capacity remains limited, intensifying existing asymmetries within the system.
Institutional Alignment and Political Normalisation
The aforementioned agreements reflect a broader political realignment within EU institutions. Restrictive migration measures now command cross-party support among centre-right and far-right actors, while opposition remains fragmented. The Commission’s evolving position is particularly notable. President Ursula von der Leyen, once cautious about offshore processing, has endorsed further exploration of such arrangements, lending institutional legitimacy to practices previously regarded as exceptional.
This alignment demonstrates how policies once framed as temporary or experimental can become normalised through institutional endorsement. The speed of the negotiations, less than two weeks between the Council position and final agreement with Parliament, underscores political urgency but leaves limited space for scrutiny of legal coherence and rights implications.
However, this political convergence has not resolved fundamental implementation tensions. Courts across Europe have already exposed contradictions within the framework: Italian judges blocked Albania transfers, citing individualised assessment requirements; German courts questioned the designation of certain safe countries based on regional persecution risks. Rather than accelerating processing, the outcome has been prolonged litigation, leaving applicants in extended uncertainty. The framework also presumes sustained cooperation from third countries that has yet to materialise. Turkey, already hosting over 3 million Syrian refugees, has shown limited interest in processing additional European asylum claims. Tunisia rejected similar proposals in 2023. The regulatory architecture thus depends on diplomatic agreements that remain largely hypothetical.
The Choice Embedded in the Reform
In conclusion, Europe now operates under a migration regime whose legal robustness and practical effectiveness remain contested. Whether policymakers will recalibrate these mechanisms in response to mounting evidence of limited returns and legal resistance, or entrench them despite their shortcomings, remains an open question.
More importantly, the reform reflects a deeper shift in how European institutions conceptualise migration governance: away from protection-centred frameworks and toward systems organised around control, deterrence and externalisation. Once consolidated, such a change may prove difficult to reverse. The challenge posed by illegal immigration does not merely regard technical implementation, but whether the European Union can reconcile enforcement ambitions with the legal and ethical commitments it continues to claim as foundational to its political identity.
References
https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2025/return-hubs
https://www.refworld.org/legal/intlegcomments/ecre/2025/en/150438
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2025/12/10/migranti-il-governo-festeggia-la-svolta-ue-i-tanti-nodi-da-sciogliere-e-lunica-certezza-lalbania-non-funzionera/8221638/
