An overcrowded inflatable boat filled with people wearing bright life vests on the open sea with a warship trailing

A French warship follows an inflatable boat carrying migrants across the channel after leaving northern France on 27 April 2026 (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Europe borrows Australia’s asylum script – outsourcing rights

Five European countries plan to send rejected asylum seekers to offshore return hubs outside the EU next year, but copying the Australian approach is likely to get messy.

Lisa Martin

7 September 20264 min read

Years ago, over curries at an embassy dinner, a charismatic Indian ambassador recounted some of his ripsnorting nicknames for fellow diplomats.

The Europeans, in particular the Scandinavians, he dubbed the “Axis of Good” because of smug human rights lectures delivered from high moral pedestals.

Those days might be numbered as European nations seek to borrow from Australia’s offshore immigration detention example and establish so-called return hubs in third countries for people with rejected asylum-seeker claims.

Rwanda and Uganda are in talks to host the centres. (A previous Denmark–Rwanda deal stalled.) Austrian media is reporting that Uganda could initially accommodate up to 10,000 migrants. (Opens in new window) Uzbekistan (Opens in new window) is another country reportedly in the mix.

On Friday, Denmark hosted immigration ministers from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Greece for talks, as a dozen demonstrators with megaphones and signs protested outside the Danish parliament.

“We expect to be ready to send the first foreigners to a partner country by the end of next year,” Danish immigration minister Morten Bødskov said, adding he hopes the first deal can be struck around New Year.

I felt moments of déjà vu as these European ministers parroted lines Australian politicians have used for decades.

The facilities will not be a prison or detention camp, he said.

“It is an agreement with a partner country that gives people that have no legal grounds to be here an opportunity to have a new chance in the partner country,” he said.

The concept has echoes of Australia’s failed resettlement deals with Cambodia (Opens in new window) and Papua New Guinea (Opens in new window).

The five ministers will gather again in Munich later in September for further talks.

Fronting the media after the Copenhagen meeting, they had scant concrete details to share.

They insisted the return hubs “must have a measurable impact on reducing migration and perilous journeys to Europe” and that “Europe’s shared values and human rights must … be reflected in the way these arrangements are designed”.

As a former Canberra Press Gallery reporter who covered immigration at the height of Operation Sovereign Borders, I felt moments of déjà vu as these European ministers parroted lines Australian politicians have used for decades – “breaking the people smuggler’s business models” and “we will decide who comes to our country”.

It remains unclear exactly where duty of care or accountability on human rights violations would lie. The ministers said the International Organisation for Migration and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would be involved in monitoring the centres.

One hopes the ministers have done their homework and are taking lessons from Australia’s experience, which the United Nations (Opens in new window), Human Rights Watch (Opens in new window) and Amnesty International (Opens in new window) consider a human rights shitshow.

Camp Four on the Pacific island of Naoero, housing for asylum seekers unwanted in Australia, seen in 2018 (Mike Leyral/AFP via Getty Images)

Denmark’s centre-left Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her right-wing Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni have pushed the European Union to take a harder line (Opens in new window) on border security and undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.

The continent is still reeling from the 2015 border security crisis that saw an influx of a million asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq (Opens in new window).

In June this year, the European Parliament approved changes to migration policy (Opens in new window) to allow member states to set up deportation centres on foreign soil.

Chaotic scenes at Ceuta in August, in which tens of thousands of Moroccans surged into the little-known Spanish enclave in North Africa before being booted out, have also created urgency as far-right parties seek to capitalise on the saga (Opens in new window).

Rights groups are bracing for the worst. Amnesty International said there was a danger the centres “will become places where human rights do not seem to apply” (Opens in new window) and noted the dismal records of Rwanda and Uganda, including the persecution of LGBTQ people in the latter.

Its Netherlands branch described the moves as “a shameless attempt by the EU to shirk its responsibilities regarding migration and shift them onto countries in the South”.

“(European) governments across the political spectrum are now dancing to the same xenophobic and racist tune,” Amnesty NL said.

Other European attempts to send asylum seekers to non-European Union countries have struggled.

Italy has had legal woes (Opens in new window). It had hoped to send 3000 people to Albanian centres but so far only 500 (Opens in new window) have gone at a cost of €670 million (more than A$1 billion) – which is seven times more expensive than an equivalent Italian centre. (Opens in new window)

In 2023, Britain’s High Court ruled that Rwanda was not a safe country for the UK to deport asylum seekers (Opens in new window) arriving on British shores. Former British Labour prime minister Keir Starmer scrapped the deal with Kigali that was set up by conservative leader Boris Johnson’s government. Only four people ended up going to Rwanda and the exercise cost British taxpayers £290 million (A$545 million) (Opens in new window).

The European Union has long considered itself a bastion of human rights and says the bloc’s work “remained grounded in our commitment to protect human rights and democracy”.

“No amount of chaos or conflict will ever change the fact that human dignity, justice and accountability are the only path to peace and prosperity for all,” the EU’s top diplomat said in the foreword of its 2025 human rights annual report (Opens in new window).

But if European countries head down Australia’s asylum-seeker outsourcing path, suicides and self-harm (Opens in new window) are probably inevitable, not to mention the risk of riots and murders (Opens in new window), corruption scandals (Opens in new window) and dodgy contractors (Opens in new window).