Member States’ Return Cooperation with Non-EU Countries: Supporting, Replicating or Undermining EU Readmission Policy?

Cooperation on readmission and return with non-EU countries has become the key focus of European Union and member state migration policy. Since the 1990s, member states have been concluding readmission agreements, with the EU following in the 2000s. In response to the 2015/2016 migration crisis, both shifted their attention to soft-law instruments and non-binding arrangements as non-EU countries were becoming more and more hesitant to enter into such agreements. While this dual approach has come to dominate relations with non-EU countries, the ‘effectiveness’ of these efforts and the relationship between member state-driven initiatives and the overarching EU readmission policy remains unclear. This article investigates the factors determining bilateral return cooperation between member states and non-EU countries and shows how the bilateral cooperation affects the EU’s own efforts. We conduct a large-scale country-to-country comparative study with a regression analysis of bilateral return cooperation between all member states and non-EU countries from 2008 to 2023. Our analysis highlights variations in cooperation levels among member states, questioning whether these individual efforts support, replicate, or potentially undermine the EU's collective readmission strategy. Our findings suggest that while member states may contribute to the broader goals of the EU’s migration policy, their diverse approaches can lead to inconsistent outcomes. This raises important questions about the ‘effectiveness’ and coherence of the EU's readmission policy in the context of increasing member state autonomy. This research thus contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between bilateral and multilateral migration and especially return cooperation with non-EU countries.