Reading settings
Scroll length
How far you have to scroll to get through the story. Nothing is cut — the same animations simply run over more or less travel.
Animation pace
Palette
Colour vision
Rendering
Saved on this device.
Western Balkans: Testing Ground for EU’s New Deportation Regime
On June 1, 2026, the European Parliament and Council agreed on new return regulations that pave legal ground for “return hubs”: camps in third countries for people with no right to stay in the member states.
“The era of deportations has begun.”
Charlie Weimers MEP, to Euronews, June 2, 2026
Brussels says the hubs will be “maybe in Africa or Asia”.
The infrastructure says otherwise.
Chapter 01 · 2002–2026
Decades of ground preparations
The EU Migration Pact did not invent the machine; it inherited one. Watch twenty-four years of centres, agreements and EU money assemble across the Western Balkans.
0 places mapped
0 agreements signed
In the site names, as BIRN lists them: AC asylum centre · RC reception centre · ARC asylum reception centre.
2002
Start twenty-four years ago. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia sign a readmission agreement.
It is annexed in 2011.
2006–2008
Brussels binds the whole region.
The EU readmission agreement with Albania comes into force in 2006; those with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia in 2008: both sides accept the return of third-country nationals who passed through the country.
2007–2014
The first asylum and detention centres open quietly, as the Western Balkans begin receiving EU pre-accession funds (IPA I: €11.5 billion across all beneficiaries; IPA II from 2014: around €12 billion).
Among them Lukavica in East Sarajevo, which detains people awaiting deportation or readmission rather than asylum seekers.
2015–2017
The Western Balkans migration crisis begins: over 1 million refugees and migrants transit through Serbia and North Macedonia on the way to Western Europe, and the map fills.
In 2016 Turkey agrees to take back irregular migrants crossing to the Greek islands, in exchange for €6 billion in aid; the EU launches an IPA II programme on protection-sensitive migration management in the Western Balkans and Turkey.
2018–2021
Frontex crosses the EU border. Status agreements with Albania (2018), then Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia (2019–2020), let Frontex officers deploy on those countries’ territory.
IPA III (2021–2027) starts with €14.162 billion; the EU pledges some €350 million for migration-related support.
November 2022
The Austria–Hungary–Serbia Memorandum on Migration Management, signed November 16: stronger border cooperation, joint deportation efforts, Serbia moves its ‘defence border’ south toward North Macedonia.
The same year Bosnia and Herzegovina receives EU candidate status, migration management among the required reforms.
2023–2024
Italy and Albania sign a protocol to build two offshore centres in Albania for migrants intercepted at sea. Serbia’s northern reception centres close after the memorandum: Subotica and Kikinda in November 2023, Sombor in early 2024.
In 2024 the EU adopts the Pact on Migration and Asylum; Serbia signs a border/migration cooperation agreement with the EU; Albania concludes its Frontex status agreement.
2026 · the machine, assembled
38 centres and 17,656 places: BIRN’s 36 plus the two Italian-run sites in Albania; 13,922 of the places in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina alone.
Ringed by agreements, all in place before the preliminary agreement on the EU Migration Pact introduced a legal basis for “return hubs” in third countries.
In their own words
● BIRN interview · audio
“The infrastructure is already here… they can very easily be put in use again within 24 or 48 hours.”
Milica Svabic · lawyer, KlikAktiv (Belgrade)
On the region’s standby detention centres
Audio: BIRN interview. Portrait: klikAktiv, rendered as halftone.
Chapter 02 · Seen from above
The proof is in the ground
Eleven sites, seen on satellite imagery. First the ground as the archives recorded it, then what was built on it.
2014–2023 · the before frames
Empty fields at Gjadër. A bare karst plateau at Lipa. Farmland beside the rail tracks at Vinojug.
Eleven sites, as the satellites first recorded them.
The same coordinates, today
Container grids, fenced yards, screening blocks. Everything here was built.
Drag the cursor to sweep the years across the grid yourself.
Verified from above
Every frame is a site from the investigation’s satellite pass, matched against dated archive imagery.
These eleven alone hold 6,256 places.
In their own words
▶ YouTube · EU Debates
“Outside the EU, but under European jurisdiction.”
Giorgia Meloni · Prime Minister of Italy
Architect of the Italy–Albania protocol
The offshore model the whole “return hubs” idea rests on. Clip embedded from YouTube (EU Debates), not re-hosted. Portrait: Palazzo Chigi (CC BY 3.0), rendered as halftone.
Chapter 03 · The paper trail
Western Balkans, embedded in the EU migration system
Law by law, deal by deal, the ratchet only turns one way. Accepting the EU’s migration demands became one of the coins candidate countries pay for accession.
2002–2008 · the quiet years
Readmission agreements lock in while nobody is watching: Bosnia and Herzegovina – Croatia (2002), Albania – EU (in force 2006), then Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – EU (in force 2008).
Both sides accept the return of third-country nationals who passed through the country.
2007–2014 · the money starts
The Western Balkans begin receiving EU pre-accession funds: IPA I, €11.5 billion across all beneficiaries, the EU’s main mechanism to align candidates with EU standards.
IPA II (2014–2020) follows with around €12 billion, more sector-based and performance-linked.
2015–2016 · the corridor
The Western Balkans migration crisis begins: over 1 million refugees and migrants transit through Serbia and North Macedonia.
In 2016 Turkey agrees to take back irregular migrants crossing to the Greek islands for €6 billion in aid, visa liberalisation talks and revived accession talks — arrivals fall sharply — and the EU launches the IPA II programme ‘Regional Support to Protection-Sensitive Migration Management in the Western Balkans and Turkey’.
2018–2021 · enforcement arrives
Frontex status agreements with Albania (2018), Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia (2019–2020); negotiations open with Bosnia and Herzegovina. EU officers can deploy on those countries’ territory, not just at the EU’s own external border.
IPA III (2021–2027) starts with €14.162 billion; some €350 million pledged for migration-related support.
2022 · the ratchet clicks
The Austria–Hungary–Serbia Memorandum on Migration Management, signed November 16: stronger border cooperation, joint deportation efforts, Serbia’s ‘defence border’ moved south toward North Macedonia.
Bosnia and Herzegovina gets EU candidate status, migration management among the required reforms.
2023–2024 · offshore, then the Pact
Italy and Albania sign a protocol to build two offshore centres in Albania for migrants intercepted in international waters.
In 2024 the EU adopts the Pact on Migration and Asylum, reinforcing externalisation and ‘safe third country’ returns with a special focus on the Balkans; Serbia signs a border/migration cooperation agreement with the EU; Albania concludes its Frontex status agreement.
2025 · repurposed
Italy’s Albania asylum-processing centres, blocked by legal challenges, are repurposed as repatriation centres.
Frontex launches a new joint operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Western Balkans Route crossings fall around 40 per cent year-on-year.
2026 · the return hubs
April: an EU–Western Balkans Summit on Migration and Asylum until 2030, in Montenegro, under an EU-funded IPA programme.
June: Parliament and Council reach a preliminary agreement on the EU Migration Pact, introducing a legal basis for “return hubs” in third countries.
The paper trail ends where it was always pointing.
In their own words
● EP · live footage
“The era of deportations has begun.”
Charlie Weimers · Swedish MEP (ECR)
Quote to Euronews, 2 June 2026
Clip: European Parliament footage, © European Union – EP, trimmed. Portrait rendered as halftone.
Chapter 04 · The system in numbers
Four thousand orders, seven protections
Nine months of official Serbian figures, 2025. One cohort of people, counted four times over, and every count is smaller than the last. Watch the line fall through it.
the official channel is an email
source: KlikAktiv Stream rate illustrative; “thousands” is the only figure and is never rendered as a count.
Lens 1 · the cohort
In nine months, Serbian authorities issued 4,281 expulsion orders.
Every dot in the frame is one of them, and this is the only complete number in the chapter.
Lens 2 · detention
Detention followed in 292 cases. The line falls to under a fifteenth of the frame.
The dots above it do not disappear; those people simply wait, uncounted.
Lens 3 · asylum
Only 99 asylum applications were registered in the same nine months.
The door barely opens.
Lens 4 · protection
7 people were granted refugee status or subsidiary protection. Seven, out of four thousand two hundred and eighty-one orders.
Every line you have watched fall is still on the frame.
Two doors, one border
At the Hungarian border the official channel, a readmission email, processed 2 people in three months.
“Thousands”, says KlikAktiv, went through the breach beside it: informal pushbacks.
Detention without defence
4,631 people passed through Lukavica between 2018 and 2024, children included.
Of roughly 1,000 detained a year, about 30 ever reach legal aid: 1 in 33. Both bars are on the same scale.
What the EU paid
None of this is improvised.
It is funded: line after line of EU money for camps, borders and returns.
In their own words
● BIRN interview · audio
“We might definitely become some sort of a hub.”
Emir Prcanovic · executive director, Vasa Prava (Sarajevo)
On the Western Balkans under the EU’s return plans
Audio: BIRN interview. Portrait: Kar!ke / Ivana Krstanović, rendered as halftone.
The testing ground is ready
The EU has not named the countries where its “return hubs” will stand. But over two decades it has financed the centres, signed the agreements, deployed the border guards and rehearsed the removals, in the Western Balkans, on the doorstep of the Union the region is trying to join. “If we allow this to happen in the Balkans,” MEP Birgit Sippel told BIRN, “it will further erode democracy within the European Union.”
Credits
Reporting Xhorxhina Bami and Marta Moreno Guerrero · BIRN
Data Eurostat · Collective Aid FOI
Imagery Esri World Imagery & Wayback (Maxar, Earthstar Geographics)
Journey built & managed by Toma Cristini-Filitika · Vaotea · vaotea.com
Visuals built with Claude (Anthropic) via Claude Code, on BIRN’s investigation data.
Share this story
Ready-made cards — vertical (9:16) for Instagram Stories, Reels and TikTok; horizontal (16:9) for X, LinkedIn and Facebook. Click to download.
