Does spending money on returning migrants work? Evidence from Africa and the Middle East

For over a decade, the European Union has used financial leverage and enforcement infrastructure as the twin pillars of its external returns strategy. It has deployed billions of euros through formal and non-formal instruments, alongside a growing apparatus of mechanisms. This deep dive, built on the evidence behind our STG Policy Brief 2026/13 and the accompanying analysis in The Conversation, examines whether these mechanisms have produced sustained cooperation on returns from Africa and the Middle East.

The short answer: they have not. Return rates remain below 10% across most of Africa. In the Middle East, meaningful cooperation is confined to a small number of states. Return rates follow regional structural dynamics more than they respond to readmission agreements or funding levels. The EU's enforcement investment has deepened a transactional, case-by-case dynamic in which cooperation is short-term and politically contingent.

Deals, funding, and the politics of migration cooperation

Financial leverage has become a key medium through which the EU governs mobility, using funding, investment packages, and project financing to encourage partner countries to cooperate on migration control and returns. Instruments like the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), the Facility for Refugees in Türkiye (FRIT), and later the Neighbourhood Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) channelled billions of euros into migration-related projects across Africa and the EU's southern neighbourhood.

Alongside direct funding, the EU wields the revised Visa Code (Article 25a) as a coercive lever, allowing the Commission to impose visa restrictions on countries deemed insufficiently cooperative on readmission. This mechanism, identified by the European Court of Auditors as the single EU tool with the most tangible results, has already been activated against the Gambia in 2021 and Ethiopia in 2024. In 2021, the Court also found that EU actions to enhance readmission cooperation were relevant but yielded limited results, and that inefficiencies in the returns system may themselves act as an incentive for irregular migration.

Financial leverage has been the driving force in the migration deals with countries including Morocco, Mauritania, Türkiye, Niger, Tunisia, and Senegal. Niger was once seen as a success after EU-backed anti-smuggling measures reduced transit migration. However, following the July 2023 coup, the military junta repealed loi 2015-36 relative au trafic illicite de migrants, an EU-backed anti-smuggling law that was instrumental in externalising migration controls to Niger. The changes in the cooperation between the military regime and the EU exposed the fundamental fragility of cooperation built on political conditionality rather than shared interest.

Türkiye, which received €12 billion in EU migration funding between 2016 and 2025 (the €6 billion Facility for Refugees in Türkiye, 2016–2019, plus a further €6 billion continuation package, 2020–2027), represents a differentiated externalisation pattern: one in which the receiving state's geopolitical leverage allowed it to extract concessions well beyond the migration domain, including visa liberalisation commitments and the suspension of the third-country-nationals clause of the EU-Türkiye Readmission Agreement since 2020.

From emergency to institutionalisation

In Africa, migration allocations exploded from €31 million in 2014 to €1.56 billion in 2017 at the EUTF's peak. The EUTF, established in 2015 as a temporary crisis-response mechanism, was gradually phased out as its funding dried up. It was replaced in 2021 by the NDICI, a broader, longer-term financing framework covering the 2021–2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) period. NDICI spending reached €2.19 billion in 2022, surpassing the EUTF peak.

What this exponential trajectory obscures is a gradual shift in spending composition: investment in migration management and border control increased year on year from 2017 at the direct expense of development cooperation projects, such that, by 2018–2019, the North Africa window was allocating funds almost exclusively to migration containment rather than to root causes of migration. This pattern suggests that the EU's financial instruments are not delivering on their stated development rationale but rather serving as a vehicle for migration control objectives.

In the Middle East, migration spending surged to €3.95 billion in 2018, driven largely by the Syria refugee response and the EU-Türkiye deal. Funding fell sharply after 2019, but the NDICI has since partially offset the decline, bringing the combined total to €2.16 billion in 2022 and €1.28 billion in 2024.

Where does the money go?

In Africa, border management and anti-smuggling received €941 million across 28 projects between 2021 and 2024, the second-largest allocation after forced displacement (€1.67 billion); legal migration and labour mobility received just €168 million across 10 projects. This skew is not incidental. Analysis of EUTF spending reveals that over half of all migration management projects were oriented towards controlling and containing migration, often with the justification of combating smuggling.

Further analysis revealed that the fund's formal objective of addressing root causes has, in practice, functioned more as a framing device than as an operational constraint. Similarly, the EUTF rarely promoted legal migration options, despite this being another of its stated goals.

This regional divergence is itself analytically significant: in Africa, the EU has deployed funding primarily as a containment tool, while in the Middle East, funding has functioned primarily as a burden-sharing mechanism in response to the Syrian crisis. Neither model has produced the sustained return cooperation that the EU's externalisation strategy aims for. As the NDICI replaces the EUTF and the new MFF introduces explicit migration conditionalities, there is a risk that the containment model will be institutionalised further without evidence that it delivers on return objectives.

Building the return system

Alongside financial leverage, the EU has invested heavily in enforcement infrastructure to increase returns. This includes border equipment, biometric databases, detention capacity, and operational support through the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). The agency has undergone four successive mandate expansions since 2004, with Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 transforming it from a coordinating body into an operational one with its own standing corps and a budget rising to an average of €900 million per year.

This expansion significantly increased the agency's capacity to acquire equipment and conduct return operations autonomously, while democratic accountability mechanisms failed to keep pace with the speed of mandate growth. A 2026 Frontex mandate review is expected to expand the standing corps further and to extend Frontex's role in deportations between non-EU countries, a function it has not previously held.

Beyond technical systems, bilateral cooperation and readmission agreements form a key part of this enforcement architecture. These arrangements, negotiated either by the EU or member states, commit partner countries to accept the return of their nationals and, in some cases, third-country nationals who transited through their territory. In practice, much of this cooperation takes place through informal operational arrangements rather than formal agreements.

Although the enforcement infrastructure is expanding, the impact on actual return rates has been limited. Enforcement tools can facilitate returns where political cooperation already exists, but they cannot substitute for it where it does not. It is against this backdrop of a structurally constrained enforcement system that the EU Return Regulation's new mutual recognition and return hub provisions must be understood: not as a solution to low cooperation, but as an escalation of the same logic that has so far failed to deliver better outcomes.

Forced versus voluntary: strategic ambiguity and blurring

Voluntary return programmes, often supported with reintegration funding, are widely promoted as a more humane alternative to forced deportations. Yet, the boundary between the two is often blurred: migrants may opt for 'voluntary' return after receiving a return order, facing detention, or losing access to legal stay. The academic literature has increasingly moved away from treating forced and voluntary return as a binary and towards recognising a spectrum of coercion embedded in ostensibly voluntary processes. Assisted returns rarely represent a pre-planned choice for migrants and are mostly a last resort.

Coerced return takes many forms: detention followed by offers of assistance, or the deliberate withdrawal of services and legal security, can create conditions of "informal coercion," leading migrants to accept so-called voluntary return. Research on Belgium's assertive return policy confirms this dynamic institutionally: rather than serving as an alternative to forced return, assisted voluntary return operates in tandem with it, expanding the net of immigration control and legitimising detention and deportation.

The case of Germany and Syria illustrates a more structural version of this dynamic. Following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Germany added Syria to its federal Return and Reintegration Assistance Programme, offering up to €4,000 per family in financial incentives to encourage departure. The Syria Accountability Project noted that several EU member states simultaneously offered lump-sum payments to incentivise Syrians to return and abandon their asylum claims, despite conditions in Syria remaining unsafe. This combination of financial inducement and political pressure is precisely what critics mean by manufactured consent rather than genuine choice.

In Africa, forced returns from EU member states peaked at 74.8% of all returns in 2023; in other words, three in four returns were coerced. By the 2024–2025 period, that share dropped to 61–62%, with assisted voluntary returns recovering from 11.4% to above 23%. This shift may partly reflect the expansion of programmes across EU member states in the style of the Government Assisted Repatriation Programme and the Reintegration and Emigration Programme for Asylum-Seekers in Germany (REAG/GARP), but it does not resolve the underlying question of whether returns taking place under threat of deportation, loss of services, or financial pressure should be classified as voluntary in any meaningful sense.

The blurring between forced and voluntary returns has serious implications for returnees. When people return to countries or zones affected by conflict or instability, they often face renewed displacement or are compelled to migrate again.

What explains the differences in return rates across regions?

Return rates across African countries vary significantly, a phenomenon that is attributable to a mix of political, institutional, and diplomatic factors. Cooperation from countries of origin, particularly with regard to willingness to issue travel documents and accept returnees, is the strongest predictor of return outcomes. Bilateral political relations and domestic interests also shape cooperation. In countries facing conflict or fragile governance, returns are often limited. Conversely, states with established migration partnerships and consular capacity tend to facilitate higher return rates, illustrating that returns are ultimately driven more by political cooperation than by financial incentives alone.

Our research shows that the aggregate African return rate of 9.9% masks dramatic sub-regional variation. North Africa's 11.2% return rate is partly driven by cooperation from Morocco and Tunisia. In contrast, return rates are lower in West Africa (7.5%) and East Africa (7.9%), regions that generate many irregular arrivals to Europe and receive substantial EU migration funding.

In the Middle East, the region's overall return rate of 16.8% is arguably driven primarily by strong cooperation from Jordan (57.0%) and Iraq (35.4%), both of which have seen dramatic improvements (+26.5pp and +23.1pp respectively) since 2021. Türkiye also shows a solid and improving return rate of 33.4%. Yemen's return rate has remained relatively stable at 2.1%, underlining the fact that high funding and political will cannot substitute for basic conditions of safety and state functionality in countries of origin.

The Middle East's pattern thus illustrates a different dynamic than that of Africa: where cooperation is politically feasible and receiving states have functional administrative capacity, return rates have improved substantially, but these conditions are highly uneven across the region.

MigFund investment and return rates: Africa, 2021–2024. Source: MigFund External database, Eurostat, the authors' calculations.

MigFund investment and return rates: the Middle East, 2021–2024. Source: MigFund External database, Eurostat, the authors' calculations.

The Return Regulation, the MFF, and the EU Asylum and Migration Pact

The Return Regulation, part of the EU Asylum and Migration Pact, aims to pave the way for an "effective return policy." On 26 March 2026, the European Parliament adopted its first-reading position on the Return Regulation (389 votes in favour, 206 against, and 32 abstentions), opening formal negotiations with the Council. If negotiations conclude swiftly, the new rules could apply from around mid-2027. The Regulation would replace the 2008 Return Directive and introduces four major changes to the enforcement architecture that are directly relevant to EU cooperation with Africa and the Middle East:

• A European Return Order: mandatory mutual recognition of deportation decisions across all member states via the Schengen Information System from July 2027, substantially increasing the operational demand placed on partner countries' readmission systems.
• "Return hubs" (Article 17): a legal basis for detention facilities in third countries with which the EU or a member state has an agreement, with no requirement that the detained individual have any connection to that country. The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights has warned this risks violating European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) obligations; critics have likened it to the logic deployed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
• Extended detention: maximum detention pending return is extended to 24 months.
• Appeals: the automatic suspension of deportations during appeals is removed, leaving this to judicial discretion case by case, a change the Council of Europe has flagged as potentially incompatible with Articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR.

The EU's Multiannual Financial Framework is the bloc's long-term budget; the current framework runs from 2021 to 2027. Migration funding flows through several instruments, most notably the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), the Border Management and Visa Instrument (BMVI), and the NDICI. Importantly, migration spending is not confined to a single budget line: the NDICI is the EU's largest external action instrument, with around 10% of its envelope devoted to migration-related purposes. This means development funding is increasingly directed towards migration control objectives.

The most significant budgetary increase in the 2028–2034 MFF proposal concerns migration, border management, and internal security. The Commission proposes a total of approximately €81 billion for home affairs, a threefold funding increase compared to the 2021–2027 period. On the external dimension, the Commission has proposed a new Global Europe Instrument with a budget of €200.3 billion, up from €110 billion in the current MFF, with priorities including the introduction of migration conditionalities and increased Commission discretion in allocating funding.

Components of the proposed €81 billion home-affairs envelope. Source: compiled by the authors based on data from DG HOME, EMN Belgium, and ECRE.

The budget is designed to support full implementation of the EU Asylum and Migration Pact, which is scheduled to enter into force by mid-2026. In January 2026, the Commission adopted a five-year European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy, further emphasising these priorities. Taken together, these measures escalate existing enforcement architecture without addressing the structural reasons why return rates remain low across most of the partner countries examined here.

Three recommendations

We conclude with three recommendations for better aligning the EU's return objectives with its financial and diplomatic investments.