Do Democracy and EU Readmission Agreements Matter? A Global View on the EU’s Return Cooperation with Third States

Return and readmission has been a main focus of the EU’s migration policy. The EU’s objective has been that migrants entering irregularly are removed (quickly). Given that readmission policy depends on cooperation with third countries, the EU is increasingly employing different forms of incentives and punishments to achieve higher return rates. This policy is contentious. Furthermore, the numbers of returns have not increased much in recent years, bringing up questions of ‘effectiveness’ (a term that is equally contested). This article seeks to investigate the differences of EU return cooperation with third countries and explain factors fostering or impeding cooperation on return. Based on Eurostat data, we calculate the EU return quota – a quotient between the number of persons ordered to leave and persons who actually leave – for all partner countries of the EU since 2008 (until today). Additionally, we juxtapose these figures with other EU data on the enforcement of immigration legislation and provide descriptive statistics. While we acknowledge and discuss the limited quality of the data (the only one available however), this large-n macro perspective provides a novel bird eye’s view on the total of EU return cooperation. Such a perspective highlights that the EU is investing time and political energy on questionable priorities. According to our findings, (a) less than half of the persons ordered to leave are actually removed from the EU’s territory; (b) EU readmission agreements and third country nationals-clauses with countries of origin and transit do not trigger a substantially higher return rate. Countries that have no EU readmission agreement often cooperate as much as (or even more than) those with one; (c) voluntary return is almost as – or, in some cases, even more 'effective' as enforced return; and (d) the quality of democracy of a partner country is not a major factor explaining the EU’s cooperation on return.