Part I — Situation overview

Delegations of five EU member states — Germany, Austria, Denmark, Greece and the Netherlands — negotiated in Rwanda this week about the African country serving as a reception and transit point for those asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected but who cannot be returned to their country of origin. Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwandan foreign minister, confirmed to the AFP news agency that the visit had taken place and that the talks are under way, but gave no further details or timetable. The government in Kigali had earlier indicated only that it had begun preliminary discussions with several European countries, without naming them. The location under consideration is the transit centre at Gashora, some sixty kilometres from the capital, to which refugees stranded in Libya were transported from 2019 onwards for the duration of the assessment of their applications; according to the Rwandan government spokesperson a significant part of those placed there have since travelled on. The five countries would like hubs operating by the end of the year. The legal possibility was created by the European Parliament adopting in June the legislation which allows member states to set up such facilities outside the territory of the Union. The French and the Spanish governments openly oppose the construction, arguing that it does not correspond to EU values and is not an effective instrument for carrying out expulsions either.

The precedent is a familiar one. In 2022 Rwanda concluded a similar agreement with the British government led by Boris Johnson concerning those arriving in small boats across the English Channel; the British Supreme Court classified the construction as unlawful in 2023 — essentially because it did not consider it assured that those transported there would not be sent on from there to a country where they faced persecution — and Keir Starmer, who took office in 2024, finally abandoned it. According to AFP’s information from the spring, the five European countries are conducting similar talks in parallel with some ten third countries. The political weight of the topic is increased by the summer’s events too: in Spanish Ceuta the situation is still tense a month after the mass border crossing at the end of July, and anti-migrant demonstrations, clashes and vigilante groups have appeared in the town — so the subject is on the agenda not only as an institutional but also as a public security and social question. It fits into this environment that at the European Commission’s early September session the college is preparing the State of the Union address of 16 September, in which, according to reports, a significant strengthening of Frontex, the EU border protection agency — the expansion of the standing corps to thirty thousand — will also figure.

The Hungarian policy stake becomes concrete at this point, and it is not what it appears to be on the basis of the daily debate. What has to be decided is not whether we “support” the idea of return hubs, but whether Hungary joins one of the consortia — because this is not an EU framework agreement but an autonomous international treaty between member states and third countries. According to MIAK’s reading this difference decides everything: concluding an autonomous treaty means autonomous responsibility, autonomous budgetary exposure and autonomous legal risk, and precisely for that reason the decision has to be grounded not in a statement of principle but in a prior impact assessment, a clear public law procedure and an exit condition written into the treaty.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three conceptual reference points arise. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights establishes an absolute, non-derogable prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment, while Article 13 requires an effective remedy for every violation of the Convention; from these two provisions follows the prohibition of refoulement, on which the British Rwanda construction failed. The Global Strategy of the European Union (2016) likewise ties the external dimension of migration to a condition of values: the document expressly undertakes that the Union will respect domestic, European and international law in every sphere, “from migration and asylum to energy, counter-terrorism and trade”, and calls internal adherence to values the condition of external credibility. Kristian L. Nielsen (Danish political scientist, a researcher of the foreign policy performance of the European Union) uses the concept termed the capability-expectations gap after the British international relations scholar Christopher Hill to describe the situation in which the Union announces an external solution for which the implementing capacity is lacking — and in which the announcement itself increases expectations, and hence widens the gap. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK’s position in this matter is procedural, not ideological. It does not take a position on whether Hungary should join one of the consortia; it takes a position on the basis of what decision material this may be decided. It proposes three measures.

3.1 A compulsory, public prior impact assessment before any accession decision

Before Hungary joins any agreement on return hubs, the impact assessment which MIAK’s I3 programme point prescribes for every significant legislative and commitment decision should be prepared and published. The assessment should contain four figures: the estimated total cost and its breakdown per head; the expected rate of returns actually carried out, compared with the current domestic and EU average; an estimate of the legal risk, expressly having regard to the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union — including the judgments in the Hungarian transit zone cases; and the cost of the worst case, that is, how much the construction costs if a court stops it in its second year. The British case shows exactly why this step cannot be left out: there the management of the legal risk was left until after the conclusion of the treaty, and by the time the court decided, the payments had already been made. The impact assessment is therefore not a slowing down of the decision but the avoidance of the most expensive mistake.

3.2 Fixing the public law procedure in advance: recognition of the binding force of the treaty is a decision for Parliament

It has to be laid down that such an agreement is an international treaty, on the recognition of the binding force of which — because of the weight of the subject matter and the budgetary and human rights obligations undertaken in it — Parliament decides; the Government conducts the negotiations and signs the treaty, but recognition of its binding force is not a governmental act. Three practical consequences follow from this. The Government should submit the negotiating mandate to the competent committee of Parliament before the talks begin; the text of the draft treaty should be discussed in committee before its final wording; and the impact assessment under 3.1 should be available for the ratification debate. This procedure is not a Hungarian peculiarity, nor is it a weakening of the executive — rather, it is the assurance that a commitment spanning several parliamentary cycles is backed by a parliamentary majority. The proposal is the domestic precondition of MIAK’s KP17 issue-based coalition-building programme point: only a country whose own position is well founded at home can negotiate credibly in an issue-based coalition.

3.3 An exit clause, a notice period and an annual public report in the treaty

MIAK’s KP22 programme point prescribes an explicit, written withdrawal scenario for every significant international commitment — even when withdrawal is not on the agenda. In an agreement on a return hub this means three concrete contractual elements. The first is the exit clause: on the fulfilment of what conditions, with what notice period and with what financial settlement Hungary may withdraw — including the case in which the judgment of an international court makes participation legally untenable. The second is the guarantee of access: the right of entry of the Hungarian authorities, of independent human rights monitoring and of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to the receiving facility should appear in the text of the treaty, not as an oral promise. The third is the annual public report: how many persons were transported out, how many of them returned to their country of origin, what the cost per head was, and how many remedy proceedings were brought. Without these three elements the agreement is not measurable, and hence it cannot be decided the following year whether it should be continued.

The three proposals are bound together by a single principle, which follows from the principled pragmatism doctrine of MIAK’s KP4 programme point: neither ideological rejection nor enthusiastic accession is a position — a position is knowing in advance how much it costs, what it brings, and how one can withdraw from it.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Foreign policy An issue-based, predictable Hungarian position in a divisive question; the partners know what to expect Prior publicity for the negotiating mandate narrows the room for manoeuvre; the partners may ask for a more closed format
Legal certainty Prior analysis of legal risk reduces the chance of the construction falling in court An international court judgment can change the legal environment even after the treaty has been concluded
Budget Measuring the cost per head and the rate of return makes comparison with domestic alternatives possible The maintenance cost of the hubs is hard to plan if the length of stay is drawn out
Asylum and law enforcement system A new instrument for those cases in which expulsion is legally well founded but practically unenforceable If the rate of return stays low, the hub is not a solution, only a relocation of the problem

The most important question for deliberation is the relation between effectiveness and lawfulness, and it is worth putting precisely. The argument in favour of the construction is not one of principle but a practical one: there are cases in which the expulsion is final but the country of origin does not take the person concerned back, and in such cases the present system produces years of uncertainty which is good for no one. The argument against is likewise practical: if the overwhelming majority of those transported travel on within a few months — as happened with the earlier residents of the Gashora centre — then the construction has not solved the problem, only made it more expensive. MIAK’s proposal deliberately does not decide this dispute but makes it measurable: the rate of return is the figure which will decide within two years which argument was the stronger.

The second question for deliberation is the relation between EU solidarity and a coalition going its own way. That France and Spain openly oppose the construction is not a technical detail: it means that this is not a common EU policy but a coalition of member states. Whoever joins takes a position in a divisive question, and this has a diplomatic price in the other dossiers — as does not joining. The essence of MIAK’s KP17 programme point is precisely that this price has to be calculated in advance, dossier by dossier, not faced after accession.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

The performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) below are suitable for judging the value of the construction in 12–24 months. These are proposed indicators, not government undertakings.

  • Rate of returns actually carried out: what percentage of the persons transported to a given hub actually returned to their country of origin within twelve months of the transfer. This is the only real success criterion of the construction.
  • Total cost per head: how much one transferred person cost including the whole procedural chain, and how this relates to the per-head cost of the domestic procedure.
  • Rate and outcome of remedies: what percentage of those concerned made use of a remedy, and what percentage of these were successful. A high success rate gives a direct signal about the legal quality of the treaty.
  • Fulfilment of monitoring access: on how many occasions independent human rights monitoring and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees gained entry to the facility, and whether a public report was prepared.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request is concrete: if the Hungarian government is weighing accession to any agreement on return hubs, then before the decision it should publish the numerical impact assessment, and it should submit the negotiating mandate to the competent committee of Parliament — because it is for the legislature to decide on recognising the binding force. And the exit clause and the annual public reporting obligation should be included in the treaty. The British experience can be summed up in a single sentence: legal risk has to be priced in before the treaty, because afterwards all that is left is to pay.

Two MIAK foundational values move together here. Data-drivenness, because in this question the daily debate is almost exclusively symbolic — while the decision is settled by two figures, the cost per head and the actual rate of return, and nobody publishes these today. And being free of ideology, because MIAK asks for the same yardstick whether the construction is announced in the name of a stricter or of a more permissive migration policy: the prior impact assessment and the exit condition are not the instrument of one position or the other, but the test of the sobriety of both.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

The topic is international, so the examination of framing extends to the international segments too; the Hungarian papers did not carry the Rwandan negotiations as a separate news item on that day.

The EU professional segment — whose leading organ is Euractiv — placed the reporting of facts and the institutional context in the foreground. The paper reported the Rwandan foreign minister’s confirmation to AFP, the names of the five participating countries, the Gashora location and the French-Spanish opposition alike, and indicated that the legal basis of the construction had been created by the European Parliament’s legislation of June. The same segment also gave the most unusual context of the day: in a separate article it reported that the college meeting of the Commission would be held in a former Belgian colonial palace, and that several EU diplomats had remarked on the symbolism of the venue in the case of a session preparing a tightening of migration policy. This framing is not about the policy content, but it indicates precisely how sensitive is the terrain on which the Union’s external migration management moves.

The British public service segment — the BBC — approached the question from the direction of Spanish Ceuta, as a social conflict: in the month following the mass border crossing at the end of July, anti-migrant demonstrations, burnt tents and the obstruction of the work of aid organisations became everyday occurrences in the town, and the mayor spoke of the town’s “right to normality”. This frame shows the domestic political motivation of the debate on return hubs: the member state governments are under pressure, and demand for an external solution springs from that pressure.

What is missing from both segments: the figures. Neither the estimated cost per head nor the rate of return of earlier similar constructions appeared in any of the reports. This is not an editorial omission — these data are not publicly available at present. It is precisely this absence that justifies MIAK’s proposal 3.1.

6.2 Facts and data

Item Datum Note
Negotiating member states Germany, Austria, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands delegation visit to Rwanda, last week of August 2026
Rwandan confirmation “the visit took place and the talks are under way” Foreign minister Olivier Nduhungirehe to AFP; no timetable given
Location under consideration the Gashora transit centre, some 60 km from Kigali from 2019 it served to receive refugees stranded in Libya
Openly opposing member states France, Spain reason: it does not correspond to EU values, and it is not effective
EU legal basis the legislation adopted by the European Parliament in June 2026 it allows member states to establish hubs outside the Union
Target date end of 2026 the five countries would like operating hubs
Parallel negotiations some ten third countries AFP, April 2026
British precedent agreement of 2022, court condemnation in 2023, abandonment in 2024 the British Supreme Court classified the construction as unlawful
Ceuta context the situation still tense a month after the mass crossing of 30–31 July according to the town leadership’s data at least 72,000 people crossed, with more than 100 fatalities

Methodological note: the Ceuta crossing and casualty figures are data communicated by the town leadership, and no independent verification of them took place on that day; the blog therefore reports them tied to their source. The two most important figures needed for the Hungarian decision — the cost per head and the rate of return — appeared in no public source.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Foreign policy (programme points) — the accession decision is a typical case of issue-based coalition-building (programme point ID: KP17), because the question rests not on EU consensus but on a coalition of member states; the framework of deliberation is principled pragmatism (programme point ID: KP4); the contractual exit condition is the direct application of the exit strategy planning protocol (programme point ID: KP22); the alignment of rhetoric and capabilities is the subject of the soft power programme point (programme point ID: KP9).
  • Justice (programme points) — the compulsory, public impact assessment before accession (programme point ID: I3).
  • Demography (programme points) — the demarcation of asylum and labour market migration, and the data-driven handling of the latter (programme point ID: DM3).
  • Public security and law enforcement (background material) — the enforceability of immigration procedures and the planning of law enforcement capacity.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 European Convention on Human Rights

Two provisions of the Convention form the legal limit on which the construction of return hubs will stand or fall. The text of Article 3 is short and unconditional:

“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

To this is joined Article 13, under which everyone whose rights guaranteed by the Convention have been violated has the right to an effective remedy before a national authority. Together the two provisions give the rule known in the literature as the prohibition of refoulement: a state may not send anyone to a country where they face a real danger of treatment contrary to Article 3, and this prohibition applies even if the sending state itself does not treat the person concerned badly. The absolute character of Article 3 means that it cannot be limited by reference to the public interest, national security or migratory pressure either.

The practical consequence from the point of view of the Hungarian decision is clear. The legal risk of such an agreement does not depend on the momentary condition of the receiving country, but on whether the treaty contains an enforceable guarantee against onward transfer, and whether the person concerned has access to an effective remedy. The British construction failed on exactly this point. MIAK’s proposal 3.3 — monitoring access and an exit clause written into the treaty — is not human rights rhetoric but the technical instrument for managing the most expensive legal risk.

📖 Source: European Convention on Human Rights, Articles 3 and 13

6.4.2 European Union: Shared Vision, Common Action — the EU Global Strategy

The EU global strategy formulates the value-driven framework of external action, and expressly places migration within that framework. The document puts the question of its own credibility at the centre:

“To safeguard the quality of our democracies, we will respect domestic, European and international law across all spheres, from migration and asylum to energy, counter-terrorism and trade.”

The structure of the argument is important: the strategy does not say that compliance with the law is an end in itself, but that internal adherence to values determines external credibility and influence. In the external dimension of migration this means that partnership conditionality — that is, the Union tying cooperation with third countries to conditions — only works if the Union applies the conditions to itself as well.

This offers two conclusions for the Hungarian position. One is that accession or staying out is in itself not a question of values and not a question of credibility — the content of the treaty is. The other is that an agreement which contains no verifiable guarantees also weakens the negotiating position of the Union as a whole in the next partnership dispute. The principled pragmatism of MIAK’s KP4 programme point handles precisely this duality: the principle does not prohibit the pragmatic instrument, it only attaches conditions to it.

📖 Source: European Union: Shared Vision, Common Action — A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (2016)

6.4.3 Kristian L. Nielsen: EU Soft Power and the Capability-Expectations Gap

Nielsen’s study re-analyses Christopher Hill’s concept of 1993 and concludes that soft power does not bridge but widens the gap between expectations and capabilities:

“Rather, soft power, when it is present, widens that gap even further by adding to expectations, thus leading to even greater eventual disillusionment when the EU’s hard power capabilities do not match.”

The observation is directly applicable to the case of return hubs. The announcement — “hubs operating by the end of the year” — creates an expectation: it suggests that the problem of unenforceable expulsions can be solved in a few months. If the implementing capacity for this is lacking, the gap does not narrow but grows, and the disappointment appears in the next electoral cycle. The lesson is not that we should not attempt it — but that the distance between the announced objective and the available capacity has to be measured in advance, with figures. This is why MIAK’s KP9 programme point prescribes avoiding expectations exceeding capabilities, and why proposal 3.1 asks for the estimated rate of return to be communicated in advance: this is the figure which shows how large the gap is.

📖 Source: Kristian L. Nielsen: EU Soft Power and the Capability-Expectations Gap, Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2013

6.5 International comparison

The idea of external reception hubs has two instructively different European precedents. One is the British-Rwandan agreement from 2022: it began with a political announcement, the analysis of legal risk was left until after the conclusion of the treaty, and the construction finally fell by judicial route, after the payments had already been made. The other is the EU-level regulatory route, which closed in June 2026 with the decision of the European Parliament: here the creation of the legal basis preceded implementation, which creates a more orderly situation in legal-technical terms — but this does not exempt the member state treaties from the autonomous obligations arising from the European Convention on Human Rights either.

A third reference which is particularly important from the Hungarian point of view is the domestic precedent: in the transit zone cases (C-808/18 and C-924/19 PPU) the Court of Justice of the European Union set limits on certain elements of the Hungarian asylum procedure, and these limits remain valid in the construction of return hubs as well. This is the explanation of why the existence of an EU legal basis is not sufficient for the decision on participation: an autonomous international treaty creates autonomous legal responsibility, and does not override the limits marked out by the earlier judgments. MIAK’s proposal therefore asks that the impact assessment expressly extend to this case law too.

Foreign policy

  • KP17 — Issue-based coalition-building in the EU
  • KP4 — Principled pragmatism doctrine
  • KP22 — Exit strategy planning protocol
  • KP9 — Soft power strategy, capability-expectations balance
  • KP7 — Foreign policy crisis management protocol

Justice

  • I3 — Legislative impact assessment

Demography

  • DM3 — Management of labour market migration

Proposed new programme point: Minimum package for the preparation of international treaties — impact assessment, parliamentary mandate, exit clause — for the Foreign policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK foreign press monitor, 30 August 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge base references (literature and legal sources):

  • 📖 European Convention on Human Rights
  • 📖 European Union: Shared Vision, Common Action — A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (2016)
  • 📖 Kristian L. Nielsen: EU Soft Power and the Capability-Expectations Gap

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP17, KP4, KP22, KP9)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I3)
  • MIAK policy area: Demography (programme points; programme point ID: DM3)
  • MIAK policy area: Public security and law enforcement (background material)
  • MIAK foreign press monitor, 30 August 2026 — topic 1, score: 89/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • The text and explanatory memorandum of the return regulation adopted by the European Parliament in June 2026
  • The transit zone judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (C-808/18; C-924/19 PPU)
  • Eurostat — return statistics (the ratio of ordered to enforced expulsions by member state)
  • Frontex — annual risk analysis

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