North Macedonia: Britain’s latest failed attempt to outsource its migration policy
Essay written by Norpell Wilberforce. Norpell is a British-Tibetan analyst and activist covering international markets and politics. Previously, he was the Opinions & Analysis intern at the Financial Times. Before that, he graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in 2024. You can read more of his writings here: https://norpellwilberforce.substack.com/
Britain’s mooted and underreported plan to deport failed asylum seekers to North Macedonia was incoherent from the outset. Under the plans, Keir Starmer’s government would pay the Balkan nation of 1.8mn inhabitants an undisclosed sum for every person on the move they accepted. People on the move would be encouraged to apply for asylum in North Macedonia to plug labour shortages in critical industries like infrastructure but would not be detained or face restrictions on their movement, making them free to leave the country.
North Macedonia is a key point along the Balkan migration route which is the union of two migration flows: the Eastern Mediterranean route that leads from Türkiye by sea to Greece, and the Western Balkan route. In the latter, people on the move cross through the non-EU states of North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then through the EU member states of Romania, Hungary, or Croatia, until they reach western Europe. While traffic along the Western Balkan route has fallen sharply, declining by 46% over the first 10 months of 2025, it remains a critical entry point into Europe for tens of thousands of people.
There are several flaws with choosing North Macedonia specifically as a return hub. Of all the countries along the Balkan migration route, people on the move spend the lowest amount of time in it. A survey by the International Organisation for Migration of 2,680 people on the move transiting through the Balkan route from May 1st to July 31st 2025 found that people on the move on average only spend 4 days in North Macedonia before travelling to Serbia or Kosovo. By comparison, they spend 123 days in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Commensurately, North Macedonia has one of the lowest rates of asylum applications among Balkan route nations. Of the 4,055 people on the move that registered in its main transit centre in 2024, only 7.5% applied for asylum. That number was even less in 2025.
The 92.5% of people on the move who are intercepted but do not apply for asylum face severe threats from both the North Macedonian authorities and the smuggling gangs they rely on. Border Violence Monitoring Network and Collective Aid have spoken with multiple people on the move who have experienced “pushbacks” to Greece after being beaten by police and having their mobiles, SIM cards, and money confiscated. As defined by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, pushbacks “entail a variety of state measures aimed at forcing refugees and migrants out of their territory while obstructing access to applicable legal and procedural frameworks”.
Pushbacks occur within North Macedonia’s unique legal limbo. Its asylum applications and transit centres operate under conditions of lex specialis introduced during the 2015. Lex specialis is a legal principle whereby a specific law overrides a more general one if both are applicable. Once a person on the move declares an intention to request asylum, the Law on International and Temporary Protection which governs asylum applications and transit centres takes precedence over the Law on Foreigners. By not allowing people on the move to declare asylum requests, North Macedonian border forces create a superficial legal justification for pushbacks under the Law on Foreigners which permits the deportation of foreign nationals who illegally enter or stay in the country. Even for the many people on the move who assent to be returned to Greece, they and NGOs working with them say their voluntary return is conducted orally and without any written documentation.
There are widespread reports of people on the move only being allowed to apply for asylum if they testify against their smugglers in illegal and undocumented hearings. Those who do testify face severe risks of retribution, exacerbated by their testimony being outside of any legal framework that could afford them witness protection. Besides this, people on the move face other abuses at the hands of border forces. In testimonies submitted to BVMN, one man recounted that North Macedonian police held a 16-year-old minor on train tracks in front of an approaching train until he confessed that there were two extra people in their group. Others allege that authorities in return centres pressured them into confessing that they themselves were smugglers. Multiple intercepted people on the move have told Collective Aid that return centres lacked basic hygiene and medical facilities for those who sustained injuries either during their journey or at the hands of border authorities.
There is also a significant risk that Britain would be deporting failed asylum seekers into deeper exploitation by smuggler networks. Since North Macedonia is a transit country and facilitators are paid at each successful border crossing, they exert intense pressure on people on the move to voluntarily return to Greece and try again to enter North Macedonia. Some people on the move even leave the return centres during the night so that authorities do not know which point of the Greek border they will try to re-enter from. If somebody has tried crossing the border multiple times, smugglers also force them to act as a guide for other people on the move.
The Labour government’s plans are unlikely to come to fruition. Speaking at a Brussels conference to counter smuggling in December, North Macedonia’s Prime Minister denied that his government was ever in negotiations with Keir Starmer’s, calling such reports “baseless”.
It is not the first time that Starmer’s overseas deportations ambitions have been shot down. Albania’s Prime Minister denounced similar plans just days after Starmer claimed they were discussed during his visit to the country in May. Montenegro’s Prime Minister has said that it is not part of the Balkan migration route because its railway infrastructure is not developed enough. With unwitting irony, he would only consider its use as a return hub if Britain invested €10bn into its railway infrastructure — over double the cost of Britain’s asylum system in 2024/2025.
Given North Macedonia’s extremely low asylum applications and transition period for people on the move, paying it to receive failed asylum seekers would do little to deter migration flows through it. Since they can retry their journey from North Macedonia, it is further questionable whether deportation there is an effective deterrent for asylum seekers willing to use highly dangerous overland or overseas routes. Most likely, British taxpayers would pay for North Macedonian authorities to continue conducting cruel and legally unsupported pushbacks that enrich smuggler networks and endanger lives.