There were some wins for the UK at the Western Balkans Summit at Lancaster House in central London today.
The UK unveiled a fresh list of sanctions – and believes it has made some headway convincing the EU to follow suit by placing restrictions on the likes of Kosovo passport forgers.
British participants also claimed to be pleased that Serbia and Montenegro were added to a joint migration taskforce and said UK and EU law enforcement would work even more closely.
But was it a moment where Sir Keir Starmer could convincingly claim to have taken a decisive step towards smashing the gangs, which was one of the goals he claimed he had for the summit this afternoon? Absolutely not.
While presented domestically as a means to tackle illegal immigration, in fact, the Western Balkans Summit was not primarily about migration, and I understood the talks focused on many other areas, including growth opportunities and EU enlargement.
Indeed, I was told that return hubs were not even on the prime minister’s agenda.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, western Balkan leaders did not want to talk about that and the summit was not designed in the first place to focus on that agenda, regardless of how it was presented to the domestic media.
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The backdrop for the summit couldn’t have been more tricky. The number of immigrants who crossed the Channel exceeded the number in 2024 on Wednesday.
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Meanwhile, the first of the 46 migrants returned to France made their way back over the Channel, claiming France is an unsafe country.
There was finger pointing from British officials about why the French police had not done more to detain and deter this man from returning.
And the truth is, migrants who leave the UK are returning – because in many cases we are giving them the cash to do so.
That aside, there is also a nervousness that the French one-in, one-out deal may collapse entirely in a matter of weeks.
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Only 42 individuals have been removed from the UK to date but the EU has to authorise this plan for the long-term and it is far from clear that it will survive.
To have secured the long term future of that deal at an international summit would be a big success. Today’s were on a much smaller scale.
