The EU Return Cooperation Regime

This chapter conceptualises the EU’s cooperation on readmission and return and embeds it within the Common European Asylum System. It highlights its relevance to EU migration policy and broader cooperation with non-EU countries. The chapter reviews the EU’s formal and informal readmission agreements, noting an informalisation trend, and analyses return rates, which peaked in 2016 and declined thereafter. Geographical differences in return rates, particularly between regions such as the Western Balkans and West Africa, are identified. The chapter combines cooperation on readmission and on return dimensions into the ‘EU Return Cooperation Regime’.