04/09/2026
The infrastructure is already there. With generous help from the EU, Balkan countries have built a network of detention and reception centres to hold migrants over the last decade. Some, including Bosnia and Serbia, already have agreements with EU members to accommodate their migrants.
“There are quite a lot of camps that are fully equipped with beds and everything needed. So, they [the currently inactive detention centres] can very easily be put in use again within 24 or 48 hours, very quickly,” said Milica Svabic, a lawyer at the Belgrade-based KlikAktiv, an NGO providing legal support to migrants and asylum seekers.
The new EU return regulations are yet to come into force. After European Council and European Parliament negotiators reached a deal on the regulations on June 1, MEPs officially adopted them on June 16. But the new rules still must be signed off by the Council of the European Union before they come into force.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a number of human rights organisations have strongly condemned the regulations, warning that outsourcing detention to ‘third countries’ outside the European bloc bypasses fundamental human rights protections.
Read BIRN's full investigation on how Balkan countries could end up hosting such migrants' centres despite concerns about human rights violations at the link in the comments.
