Besides the continuation of austerity measures, the crackdown on civil liberties, and the acquiescence to the Israel lobby, the UK’s Labour government is also following in the footsteps of the former Conservative government in its commitment to so-called migration management strategies. Although it immediately scrapped the Rwanda plan after coming into power, Labour is now seeking to experiment with its own version of border externalisation, through the establishment of so-called return hubs in the Western Balkans.
Freedom of information (FOI) requests to the UK’s Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and our analysis of ongoing UK-Western Balkan diplomacy efforts and projects from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in the region show that Serbia is the front runner to house UK return hubs in the Western Balkans, both practically and operationally.
Background
In March of this year, the UK Labour government began to signal its interest in setting up so-called return hubs in the Western Balkans. The plan would involve paying a country in the region to detain people who have had their asylum claim rejected in the UK and were awaiting deportation. During a press conference in May, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer went as far as to call these hubs “a really important innovation”.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s April tour of Kosovo and Serbia, followed by Prime Minister Starmer’s visit to Albania in May, cemented the Western Balkans as the current focus area for the UK’s border externalisation strategy.
Lammy did not arrive in Kosovo and Serbia empty-handed. On behalf of the British government, he gifted both governments an assortment of border surveillance equipment. The visit also saw the signing of an organised immigration crime agreement between the UK & Serbia. The press release announcing the agreement claimed that Lammy will see “UK technology being used to detect drugs and weapons concealed in vehicles – alongside drones and cameras used to track popular smuggling routes and prevent people dangerously and illegally crossing borders”.
However, prior to going public with their return hub plan, the UK has been working hard to lay the strategic groundwork for a so-called return hub deal in the Western Balkans.
Back in November, the UK government pledged £150 million over the next two years for the Border Security Command, a new law enforcement agency responsible for coordinating so-called immigration enforcement. The government also announced that the Home Office will invest £24 million to “bolster work done by special prosecutors and operational partners in the Western Balkans”. What this work is and who exactly the operational partners are is unclear.
A few days later, as part of the European Political Community Summit in Budapest, the UK government announced that it had established new agreements with Western Balkan countries to “increase intelligence sharing” within the context of migration. However, no immediate or planned financial commitment - necessary for the establishment of a so-called return hub - was included in the agreements concluded at the summit, leaving many to wonder where the UK’s planned deportation.
Available infrastructure
Despite deep-rooted issues with democracy and a poor human rights record, most notably with regards to the rights of people on the move, it appears that Serbia has the readily available infrastructure to make return hubs a reality and that the UK has been actively engaging in the strategic groundwork to make Serbia a viable partner in its efforts to externalise border management post-Brexit.
In the winter of 2023, a large-scale policing operation was carried out along Serbia’s northern border with Hungary. The openly violent operation successfully disrupted flows of migration through Serbian territory. People were forcibly removed from informal living sites along the Serbian-Hungarian border and then held in severely overcrowded conditions at the Obrenovac Asylum Centre (AC) and the former Sombor Reception and Transit Centre (RTC). During their detention, many people were subjected to physical and material abuse at the hands of Serbian authorities. They were also held in outdoor reception facilities where they were exposed to critically low temperatures and harsh winter conditions.
The special policing operation was followed by the permanent closure of three reception facilities and a further seven were placed on standby (i.e, staffed but not operational) leaving the vacant facilities suitable for reuse. This ready-built infrastructure may well be the deciding factor in Serbia’s accession to becoming the first Western Balkan country to host return hubs.
In the Summary Notes of a February 2025 meeting between representatives from the FCDO and their Serbian and Bosnian counterparts - obtained through FOI request -, Serbian authorities “welcomed UK collaboration and emphasized the law enforcement elements of their programmes, in line with UK priorities”. A Serbian government representative also explained that the facilities closed following the large-scale policing operation were, in fact, just “‘frozen’ not closed [,] and can be made operational quickly“.
More secrecy
The summary notes revealed that this meeting was part of Phase II of an IOM project, titled “Support for Evidence-Based Migration Management in the Western Balkans”, and involves the governments of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo, as well as the FCDO.
Beginning in November 2023 and reportedly ending in March 2024, Phase II of the project in question proceeded without any public announcement.
Despite this, IOM’s 2024 financial report shows that the UK earmarked 481,386 USD for this project. The FCDO, for its part, claims that no IOM project active in the Western Balkans for 2025-2026 is currently in receipt of UK funding. Due to the lack of publications surrounding Phase II of the Support for Evidence-Based Migration Management in the Western Balkans project, it is not clear what the scope of this second phase might be, while the FCDO refuses to attest to its involvement.
The meeting between UK and Serbian authorities did not occur in isolation. In fact, UK representatives met with the Serbian Ministry of Interior (responsible for border policing) and the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and Migration (SCRM) three times in May 2025 alone - on topics of migration and security.
Hurtling towards a Faustian bargain
As the only government department in Serbia that deals with migration and asylum directly, the SCRM is likely to be the UK’s main interlocutor within the scope of a return hub deal going forward.
However, SCRM has a deeply troubling history of dealing with migration.
In the past year alone, monitoring groups in Serbia have identified 4 cases of deaths as a direct result of SCRM negligence. In one instance, one person was refused reception into the Sjenica facility and died as a result of being forced to sleep rough in extremely cold temperatures. In another instance, an individual was refused medical attention by camp staff and ultimately died on the way to a hospital as a result of their condition.
In February 2024, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) reported an illegal pushback to Bulgaria, orchestrated directly from a SCRM facility on the outskirts of Belgrade. Such pushbacks are well documented, and are regularly carried out by the Serbian border police. BVMN’s monthly reports have also regularly documented the inhumane conditions in the SCRM’s reception and asylum facilities in the country.
Corruption is also rife within the governmental agency. A 2023 investigation by the Sarajevo-based news outlet Balkan Insight found that certain staff within the SCRM facilities were working in tandem with smuggling networks.
The UK government seems to be well aware of Serbia’s lackluster human rights track record, but is willing to turn a blind eye. A heavily redacted version of the FCDO’s most recent human rights assessment of Serbia, also obtained through a FOI request, lists nine key areas to monitor. Although it notes “a deterioration in democratic processes has been noted in various international rankings for several years in a row”, the assessment does not make any mention of the extent of violence against people on the move in the country.
Alongside the UK’s efforts to build relations with Western Balkan countries, particularly Serbia, in the area of migration management, there also appears to be an attempt to keep the details of these activities out of the public eye. It remains to be seen how this strategy will pan out for the Labour government as they try their hand at yet another ruinous border externalisation policy for the country.
