Why is the EU proposing this now?

Facilitating deportations has been a long-term priority for the EU, but previous efforts to revise rules on returns have failed.

New rules to overhaul migration management - the Migration Pact agreed in May - are not due to be implemented until mid-2026, leaving the bloc in a complicated transition period.

Von der Leyen’s proposal comes amid growing public support in some countries for politicians calling for tougher controls, and governments are adapting their policies in response.

Germany reintroduced temporary border checks in September, following a mass stabbing linked to a suspected Islamic State member from Syria.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said his country would temporarily suspend the right to asylum while France, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Italy and Slovenia have also introduced border checks.

How do the new proposals differ from the UK’s Rwanda scheme?

Some U.K. newspapers are noting similarities between the EU proposal and Britain’s scrapped Rwanda-scheme, which would have required people arriving illegally in Britain to be sent to the central African country, even if their asylum requests could eventually have been accepted.

However, the new EU proposal takes inspiration from a deal signed between Italy and Albania in 2023, von der Leyen said. Under the accord, selected migrants picked up at sea will be sent directly to Albania, where their asylum requests will be assessed by Italian personnel under Italian jurisdiction.

Successful applicants will be allowed to enter Italian territory, while those whose requests are rejected will be taken to Italy and put in holding centres until they can be deported to their home countries.

Italy says it would only send up to 36,000 non-vulnerable people from its list of safe countries to Albania, meaning these are people who would have little chance of obtaining asylum in any case.

Will it work and what are the human rights concerns?

The proposal to offshore asylum procedures to non-EU countries raises a number of legal, ethical and financial questions.

Rights groups point to uncertainty around how people’s rights will be safeguarded outside the EU, how people will access legal advice, and the lack of guarantees that children or vulnerable people will not be sent to “return hubs”.

“This latest idea is simply another bid by EU leaders to keep people on the move out of sight and out of mind, and is not a sustainable solution to (Europe’s) migration challenges,” the International Rescue Committee’s EU advocacy director Marta Welander said in written comments.

The policy would fail to act as deterrent, she added and “merely force (migrants) into the hands of traffickers and onto ever more dangerous routes.”

Human Rights Watch has said the Italy-Albania deal is in breach of international law and is “all but guaranteed to violate people’s rights”.

Returns are also costly to execute and require the cooperation of the receiving country, which can be challenging when there are no diplomatic ties between countries, such as between Syria or Afghanistan and many EU countries.

However, Germany resumed deportations of convicted criminals of Afghan origin back to their home country in August in a deal mediated by Qatar, meaning Germany did not have to negotiate directly with the Taliban.

It marked a U-turn after Berlin stopped returning people to Afghanistan because of human rights concerns after the Taliban took power in 2021.