EU Proposes Rule to Send Asylum-Seekers to ‘Safe’ Third Countries They’ve Never Been To

New rules proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday would allow the EU to legally remove asylum-seekers and send them to a third “safe” country they may have never been to. 

Current European Union laws already stipulate that a member-state may reject an asylum claim on the grounds that the applicant “could receive effective protection in a third country that is considered safe for them” and return them to said country. However current laws have a “connection criteria”, meaning that the asylum-seeker must have some connection to, or have traveled through, the third country.

For example, a 2016 deal between European and Turkey designated Turkey a “safe third country” in such terms, meaning that all asylum-seekers who have traveled through Turkey on their way to Europe must prove that they could not have received adequate protection in Turkey before they can begin their asylum claim. 

The proposed change would allow the third country to be any country that the EU or a member-state has an arrangement with and that passes certain criteria, including one the asylum-seeker may have never been to. 

This will open avenues for the use of “return hubs” much like the one created in Albania at the impetus of a deal with Italy. 

Italy spent €670 million on a pre-deportation and detention center in Shëngjin, Albania for people who have applied for asylum in Italy but are from nations Italy has determined to be “safe countries of origin.” The first asylum-seekers were sent there in October 2024. 

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni has suggested that “The agreement could be replicated in many countries.” Germany and Denmark are considering it.

The European Commission proposal announced on Tuesday additionally states that appeals based on the safe third country concept “will no longer have an automatic suspensive effect.”

These proposed changes come after considerable pressure from certain member-states regarding reducing migration to their countries and the bloc.

“EU countries have been under significant migratory pressure for the past decade,” stated Magnus Brunner, Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration. “With the Pact on Migration and Asylum, the Commission, Member States and the European Parliament have agreed on a common system to better manage this pressure. The revised Safe Third Country concept is another tool to help Member States process asylum claims in a more efficient way, while fully respecting the EU’s values and fundamental rights.”

However human rights groups have decried the proposal, and the “safe third country” concept broadly.

“The EU is cynically distorting the concept of ‘safety’ to meet its own repressive ends,” stated Sarah Chander the Director of Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice. “It is paving the way for migrants to be removed and deported basically anywhere, putting people in danger whilst enriching security companies invested in the business of deportation.”

Amnesty International has repeatedly spoken out against such arrangements: “Across Australia’s offshore detention scheme, Italy’s agreement with Albania, or the UK’s aborted Rwanda scheme, we have seen these tried-and-failed policies before,” said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office. “They consistently result in drawn out litigation, costly centers sitting empty, lives in limbo, as well as systematic arbitrary detention and other grave rights violations. Such proposals are not only endlessly cruel, but catastrophic in reality.”