“Dublin’s dead” – as EU confirms only 15% of requests resulted in returns in 2025
In UK’s last membership year, it could only deport 5.0% of all requests it made
Macron won’t take his illegal migrants in the UK back – even if we ‘rejoined’
EU’s latest figures show none of its illegal migrant plans have worked
As Andy Burnham tries to sell his vague plan to fix the country and to see off the threat from Nigel Farage’s ‘populist’ Reform UK, a resurgent Conservative Party, and the Greens, immigration will – or should be – one of his major priorities. We have the latest figures from the EU, which will have an impact on Andy Burnham’s plans.
With the latest example of the UK’s inability to deport migrants in the form of horrific mass offender Shabir Ahmed topping the news, Mr Burnham may be tempted to say that aligning more closely with the EU would mean we could at least deport a significant number.
Sadly, after 36 years of trying, the EU’s figures show this is not the case.
Stand for Our Sovereignty in association with Brexit Facts4EU and The Campaign for an Independent Britain, delves into the detail of the latest EU figures on returns. This report has been shared exclusively in advance with GB News.
This has significant ramifications for the UK’s illegal migrant problem. Only 16,620 returns were made within the EU in 2025 – and this is amongst 27 countries. It was far worse for the UK in its last membership year (2020), as we show below in this report.
With over 205,000 having arrived in the UK from President Macron’s France alone, and only a very expensive ‘get one, give one back free’ deal with him to show for Labour’s efforts, the EU’s latest data shows Andy Burnham can’t argue that we would be any better off in the EU.
Huge amount of paperwork in the EU – few transfers actually made
Each request from an EU member country to deport an illegal migrant back to another country in the EU involved an enormous amount of official paperwork. Below is what happened in the EU last year (2025).
If EU countries could not even deport illegal migrants back to the EU country they last came from, what chance did they have of deporting them to their original, home countries?
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“Dublin’s dead” – Lord Redwood comments exclusively to GB News, Stand for our Sovereignty and Facts4EU
“Mr Burnham inherits a failed policy to smash the gangs, and a country angered by the failure to control our borders. He will soon discover that Dublin is dead. This EU Agreement that we had to sign up to in the EU never stopped the lorries or the boats. People smuggling flourished out of France to the UK. Switching illegal arrivals from hotels to adapted military accommodation or to homes in settled communities has led to many protests.
Will the new PM arrest the boat drivers, seize the mobile phones to see who is receiving payment for these dangerous journeys and go onto websites to track the boats and their organisers? Will he do what it takes to send illegals back? That will need changes in the law and withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights. The EU re-set with a Young Persons Mobility scheme will make the problem worse.”
When the UK was a member of the EU, it did far, far worse than most EU countries
As an EU member country, with the huge draw the UK has always represented to illegal migrants, it might be thought that the UK would have been able to deport large numbers back to the EU country they last came from. Not so.
In fact, the UK was only able to deport 5.0% of all the requests it made in the last five years of membership. Only 1,253 returns were made in the whole of the five years from 2016 to 2020, when the UK left. This is out of a total of 24,829 requests made, according to the latest full figures from the Home Office.
Only 5.0% of UK’s ‘send back’ requests were accepted by EU countries
The ECHR – One of many critical reasons Burnham will find he can’t align tightly with the EU
In amongst the EU’s thinking on illegal immigration there is the red line of the ECHR. It is now generally accepted by most in the UK that leaving the ECHR completely is essential for the United Kingdom to re-gain control over immigration. This is now policy for Reform UK and the Conservative Opposition in Parliament.
There are several other elements which need to be addressed including the UN Treaty, but Andy Burnham’s first obstacle is the EU. They simply will not accept the UK refusing to be bound by the ECHR. Aligning more tightly with the EU, as the new PM has said he wishes to do, is incompatible with a fully-functioning, independent migration policy for the UK.
Finally, how many were actually deported in each direction?
The outcome of the above is shown in our final chart below. In the final five years of the UK’s membership, we took back three times as many of the EU’s migrants as they took from the UK. In short, Britain was always a net loser from the Dublin Agreement.
The proof the UK was always a net loser from the Dublin Agreement
The original ‘Dublin Agreement’
The EU Commission first dreamt up the idea of a common asylum policy 37 years ago, back in 1989 when Lady Thatcher was still Prime Minister.
In 1990 they introduced the ‘Dublin Agreement’, so called because the meeting where it was agreed took place in Ireland. This was then replaced with ‘Dublin Agreement II’, then ‘Dublin Agreement III’ in 2024. The rules were then further governed by so many amending Regulations and Directives we can’t list them all here. Now we have ‘the Pact on Migration and Asylum’, supposedly implemented last month.
To give some idea of the disagreement amongst member countries, here is what the EU Commission’s statistics agency wrote in their report this month, as they tried to make sense of all the data:-
“After intense, yet unsuccessful negotiations, the EU countries were unable to agree on a common approach and negotiations on the proposal for a reform of the Dublin Regulation stalled.”
– Eurostat, 02 July 2026
Lord Redwood comments further to GB News, Stand for our Sovereignty and Facts4EU
“Those who say the Dublin Agreement when we were in the EU solved the problem of illegal migrants are totally wrong. As Facts4EU reveals the UK was only able to send back a tiny proportion of all those who came. Worse still, in every one of our last five years in the EU we had to take in more migrants under the scheme than we were allowed to send back. Dublin made the problem worse.
Leaving the EU did at least stop that route for people to come into the UK. The EU always thought the UK should take its share of migrants allowed to enter across the poorly policed long southern border of the European Union. It is pressing for a Young People Mobility scheme to get the UK to house, train and employ many more from the continent. We do not have enough homes, jobs or money to do that.”
Observations
Andy Burnham may well want to “rejoin the EU in my lifetime”, but in common with most Rejoiners he seems to have little idea what the EU is. We are now 10 years on from when the largest vote in British political history took us out and gave us back (partial) sovereignty over our country. Even 10 years ago the EU was not what Remainers thought. Today it has changed even more radically.
One of the many arguments Rejoiners have used to illustrate what they think are advantages of membership is the Dublin Agreement. However, as we have demonstrated above, this never worked for the UK. With a success rate of only 5.0%, the number of deportations were minuscule. It should be remembered that these were only deportations back to the last EU country they came from, not back to their home country.
On top of that, the UK took back three times as many illegal migrants from the EU as the EU took back from the UK, making the UK a net loser in the relationship. In any event, the EU’s Dublin Agreement is no more.
As for the 200,000+ illegal migrants Macron has allowed to cross the Channel, the best the Labour government could get was a “one in, one out” deal, with zero effect on net immigration. The UK being a member of the EU again one day will not change French attitudes. Especially not when they have a large illegal immigration problem of their own.
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Please support our work
If more patriotic members of the public donate, we will keep going.
Please donate today to our research partner, Facts4eu, if you would like to continue reading us tomorrow, next week, and the weeks after.