Britain is following “with interest” a push by EU coun-tries to set up migrant deportation centers outside the bloc, as it weighs its own “next steps” to curb illegal migration, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said.
Five European Union countries, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Greece and the Netherlands, have been in talks to set up a so-called return hub as soon as pos-sible, with an announcement on the location due next week.
“We will watch that with interest,” Burnham said ad-dressing reporters after a European summit in Dublin on Nov. 12.
“The public want us to do whatever we can to deal with illegal immigration. We’ve made progress, as you know, on small boat crossings, but we’ve got further to go. So we are considering our next steps, and we will keep those developments under review.”
Earlier, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the first country to host such a center should be re-vealed next week.
European diplomats and other people briefed on the talks have said Rwanda is the likely choice.
The African Great Lakes nation had confirmed in Au-gust it had begun “preliminary discussions” with sev-eral European states, without specifying which ones.
Kigali had in 2022 reached a deal with Britain’s former Conservative government for Rwanda to take migrants who had arrived in Britain via “dangerous or illegal journeys” before their asylum claims were heard.
The deal was eventually scrapped by Burnham’s La-bour predecessor Keir Starmer.
Unlike the discarded British plan, the EU’s scheme would see rejected asylum-seekers taken to a third country.
Until recently a fringe idea, the return hub push re-flects the tougher stance sought by many govern-ments at a time when a souring public opinion on mi-gration has fueled far-right electoral gains across the continent.
