Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government in Rome has called on the European Union to establish migrant return hubs in Africa in the wake of last week’s Ceuta border crisis.
At a meeting of EU interior ministers on Tuesday, the Meloni government in Rome argued that the “Albanian model” should be adopted more broadly for the entire bloc and that asylum processing centres should be established and funded by Brussels in Africa to stem the tide of illegal migration across the Mediterranean.
Meloni’s government has been successful in driving down the number of illegal migrants arriving by boat, with 16,732 aliens reaching Italian shores so far this year. This is compared to 34,737 and 36,978 at this time of year in 2024 and 2025, respectively. Overall, illegal sea arrivals declined from their 2023 peak of 157,651 to 66,617 in 2024 and 66,316 in 2025, with numbers expected to decline even further this year.
This came despite Rome’s central deterrence strategy of immediately sending illegal boat migrants to asylum processing centres in Albania being held up in legal limbo following activist attorney challenges in Italy and the intervention of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which is expected to provide a final ruling on the plan next month after years of legal wrangling.
However, following significant lobbying by Meloni’s faction, the European Parliament passed legislation in June that cleared the way for EU member states to establish third-country migrant return hubs, a move inspired by the Albanian model.
On Tuesday, in an emergency virtual meeting called in the wake of the Ceuta crisis in which tens of thousands of illegals stormed the border of the Spanish exclave from neighbouring Morocco last week, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi laid out Meloni’s vision for adopting the plan at an EU level, in which migrant return hubs could be established in Africa and elsewhere in exchange for preferential trade agreements with host countries.
According to Il Giornale, Rome identified Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal, and Uganda as potential candidates in Africa, as well as Montenegro in the Balkans and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Piantedosi argued that this would make deportations more efficient and would serve as a deterrent against future illegal migration to Europe.
Meloni has already shown some success in negotiating with African interlocutors, having previously led EU agreements with Libya and Tunisia to increase their efforts to crack down on people-smuggling networks operating along their coastlines.
Meloni’s migrant return hub plan appears to have broad support, with liberal Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen serving as a key partner to Meloni in advocating for a broader EU adoption of the Albania model. Other major players, including Austria, Greece, and Germany, are all said to be interested in establishing “pilot” programs in third-party countries deemed “safe”.
Il Giornale also reported that EU chief Ursula von der Leyen—whom Meloni has long sought to court as an ally during her tenure—has given her stamp of approval. She is said to be looking for a “common response” and is reportedly “ready to evaluate complete proposals, based on strategic cooperation”.
Should Meloni strike an EU-wide agreement on her plan, it would likely bolster her image as an effective leader and bolster her governing coalition as she heads into a contentious re-election campaign in 2027.
Although her government has reduced the number of illegal arrivals, lacklustre deportation figures have left room for ex-political ally and former Italian Army general Roberto Vannacci to set up a rival right-wing party, National Future, which advocates a hardline “remigration” stance from Rome. If Meloni succeeds in crafting a migrant return hub agreement, it may serve to undermine the challenge to her right.
However, Italy is not the only EU country set to hold critical elections next year, with voters in France and Spain also set to head to the polls in 2027.
While combating the migrant crisis is clearly in Meloni’s political interests, it is unclear whether that is the case for outgoing French President Emmanuel Macron or Socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Indeed, despite broad support for mass deportations in France, the globalist lame duck has come out as a leading opponent of the plan. Following the EU Parliament vote backing the establishment of third-country migrant return hubs, Macron claimed the idea went against the principles of “Europe” and said France would not participate in any such plan.
Furthermore, the former Rothschild banker said that Paris would also “oppose the use of the European budget” to fund any migrant return centres, claiming that it would damage the EU’s reputation in Africa.
For his part, Prime Minister Sánchez, whose government is in the process of granting amnesty to upwards of a million illegal migrants and which recently oversaw the “invasion” of Spanish territory by over 70,000 aliens in less than a day, has also come out in opposition to migrant return hubs, claiming that they are “not effective” and “contrary to the values of the EU”.
With immigration likely to dominate the presidential election in France next April and the parliamentary elections in Spain next August, it remains to be seen whether the opposition in Madrid and Paris will hold, given that anti-mass-migration parties are currently favoured to win both contests.