A British tabloid claims that the EU would rule out any form of migrant return agreement with the UK. This might reflect badly on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who made the issue of migrant arrivals across the English Channel a key pledge in his manifesto.
According to the British Daily Mail newspaper, official records have been leaked indicating that a high-level aide working for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will categorically refuse an agreement with the UK for returning migrants.
According to the right-wing daily tabloid, von der Leyen's head of cabinet, Bjoern Siebert, told Sir Tim Barrow, National Security Adviser to the UK's Cabinet Office, during a face-to-face meeting earlier in the year that any arrangement for the EU to take back migrants would be rejected.
This is against the backdrop of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying earlier this year that reaching closer cooperation deals with the EU on border security matters "must be top of the agenda."
However, both sides did meanwhile reportedly agree to work together on combating traffickers and taking other immigration measures jointly, according to the memo.
Prior to the UK's departure from the European Union in 2020 — referred to commonly as "Brexit" — the return of migrants and refugees to their first country of entry in the EU was part of the benefits that came with Britain's EU membership under the so-called Dublin regulation.
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Still room for negotiation
The Daily Mail says it based the reports on an internal British government memo, which had been leaked and viewed by the newspaper.
The document allegedly states that Siebert "stressed that the Commission is not open to a UK-EU readmissions agreement."
Officials in Brussels meanwhile contested the report, adding that "Siebert never said what it is claimed," according to an EU Commission spokesman also cited by the Daily Mail.
Government politicians in the UK meanwhile still hope to reach an agreement with the EU to send back migrants, as the issue of migrant arrivals and deaths in the Channel has become one of the biggest immigration-related issues in the country in the run-up to next year's general election.
Read more: Are Italy and the UK preparing to strike a deal about migration?
UK migration policy
Any kind of agreement for the return of migrants would effectively only affect relations between Britain and its immediate neighbor across the Channel, France.
However, France says that it cannot sign any direct deal with the UK, as immigration policy is an EU issue, saying that the bloc's border arrangements can only be decided by the EU Commission in Brussels.
Prime Minister Sunak has repeatedly expressed a wish to secure closer co-operation with Europe at large on the issue of Channel arrivals, which continue to grow in number year-on-year.
Earlier this week, the Press Association (PA) news agency reported more than 100,000 migrants arrived in the UK by crossing the English Channel without papers since 2018. The UK's overall immigration figures have tripled -- despite Brexit putting a stop to the freedom of movement of EU nationals into Britain.
However, the UK's overall immigration numbers are low when compared to similar countries and economies; Italy, for example, received more that 105,000 migrants in 2022 alone, while overall net migration to Germany in 2022 stood at 1.5 million, according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany.
Read more: UK and France refocus on limiting Channel migration
If not EU, then Rwanda
However, according to the Daily Mail, the failure to reach an agreement with the EU could embolden the UK to double down on seeking unconventional immigration control methods, such as the controversial UK-Rwanda asylum deal.
Since Britain cannot send legitimate asylum seekers — who make up the majority of Channel arrivals according to current acceptance rates — back to their home countries, the Home Office might consider that its only other option is to "send them … to a safe third country such as Rwanda," says the daily newspaper.
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However, that policy has repeatedly faced legal challenges and continues to be contested after it was declared unlawful by the Court of Appeal in June. The court ruled that Rwanda's own human rights record was not up to the standards it would have to meet if a cooperation with the UK were to be enacted.
Earlier, there had also been challenges to the divisive policy on the grounds of it contravening the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC), of which the UK is still a signatory.
Some members of Sunak's Conservative Party may now put pressure on the prime minister to leave the EHRC as well, perhaps especially if the EU does in deed refuse to consider a migrant returns deal with the UK.
Read more: 'The paradoxes of the UK's post-Brexit migration policies