Why Money Isn’t Enough: Italy and the Stalemate of EU-Africa Return and Readmission Policies

Despite intensified EU funding and a proliferation of formal and informal agreements, cooperation from many African states on the return and readmission of their nationals remains limited, a persistent paradox at the heart of EU migration governance. This paper examines why greater resources have not translated into more effective cooperation, arguing that the problem lies less in financial incentives than in the design, diversity, and implementation of the tools deployed. Focusing on Italy, the study uses the MigFund dataset and The Big Wall database to study the evolution of EU- and Italy-funded return-related interventions across Africa. It assesses whether implemented activities have diversified over time, whether they address the political and structural obstacles that shape African states’ willingness to cooperate, and how both Italian and EU actors have adapted their approaches in response. The analysis shows that, despite the diversification of agreements at the political level, the interventions eventually implemented on the ground remain concentrated on reintegration support and a narrow set of measures that target only a fraction of the underlying cooperation challenges, with very limited diversification. Many activities are generic in their design and insufficiently aligned with partner countries’ domestic constraints, interests, and sociopolitical contexts. The analysis explains the gap between strategic ambition in the governance of return and implementation on the ground and, in doing so, discusses the conditions under which the EU can act strategically in its external migration policy.