What do we know about the UK-France agreement on asylum returns?

As announced in July, this week a treaty between the UK and France on asylum returns has been ratified and is now in force. The treaty provides for people who have arrived in the UK by crossing the Channel to be returned to France, in exchange for France sending people who have not attempted the journey to the UK, on a one for one basis. Yesterday, a statement of changes to the immigration rules was also published, relating to the part of the scheme that will bring people to France.

This is a pilot scheme and is due to end on 11 June 2026. The Home Office announcement states that they expect to begin detaining people “within days” with a view to removing them to France.

What is in the treaty?

The 21 page treaty sets out an end-to-end process which is to last up to three months from the person’s arrival in the UK. I have mainly looked at the provisions that apply to people who will be returned to France, as the treaty is currently the most detailed source we have for this group.

Those who are returned to France will have “their administrative situation examined” (Article 1(4)(a)), which presumably means their asylum claim will be considered there. Those admitted to the UK will have their applications for permission to remain, which is to be made after arrival, considered.

Article 4(1) sets out the obligation for France to readmit people where certain criteria are met, including:

d. the United Kingdom confirms that at the time of their transfer they will be a person who has either not made a protection claim (including someone who has withdrawn their protection claim) or a person whose protection claim has been declared inadmissible in accordance with domestic law of the United Kingdom;

e. the United Kingdom confirms that at the time of their transfer that person will not have an outstanding human rights claim (which shall include a Third Country National with a human rights claim that has been certified under United Kingdom law as clearly unfounded);

f. the United Kingdom confirms that at the time of their transfer that person will have no outstanding suspensive judicial remedies; and

g. the United Kingdom confirms that at the time of their transfer that person will have no extant injunction or court order the terms of which prohibit that person’s transfer from the United Kingdom.

Article 4(1)(e) may to be the most important one there, as the wording seems to indicate that even a certified human rights claim will take a person outside the treaty (possibly just bad drafting? It’s not like getting this correct and clear is important). The readmission obligation on France will not apply where certain provisions apply, including:

b. shall not apply if the individual is considered by the United Kingdom to be a pre-existing threat to public order or national security of the United Kingdom;

c. shall not apply if the Third-Country National was known to have arrived in the United Kingdom more than 14 calendar days prior to the date of the readmission request;

d. shall not apply to unaccompanied minors;

e. may not apply if the transfer happens after the duration of the process foreseen in Article 1, paragraph 1, notwithstanding the possibility of France nonetheless agreeing to the transfer;

Article 6 sets out the requirements for the UK to meet when submitting a readmission application to France, which includes providing information on whether the person is detained and if so for how long (possibly because France has a 90 day time limit on detention?).

Article 8 sets out the time limits for readmission. This is an important one as it says that the UK must submit an application for readmission within a “maximum of 14 calendar days” after the person has arrived in the UK. If there is one thing that is conducive to effective Home Office decision making, it is having to rush it in order to meet an arbitrary deadline. If the Home Office cannot make the request within 14 days, the treaty will no longer apply.

France will then have 14 days from the date the request is sent to respond, although that can be extended to 28 days. If no response is received from France within 28 days then the readmission request is considered to be denied.

Article 9 deals with transport logistics. It appears from Article 9(2) that UK escorts are permitted to use force in the UK, but this is prohibited once they reach France. 

Who will be sent back to France, and how?

The announcement states that “Under the new UK-France returns treaty, any adult migrant who crosses the Channel will now be at risk of return under the pilot scheme if their claim for asylum is considered inadmissible”. This applies to anyone arriving on or after 6 August 2025.

Media reports have said that the UK is aiming to return around 50 people per week, however there is no indication of numbers in the treaty, only of “balancing” to ensure that the number of people being returned to France and entering the UK match. In the seven days from 28 July 2025 1,259 people arrived across the Channel. The reason the scheme is being introduced is to deter people from making the crossing, but if there is even a small chance that people will not be returned, it seems likely that many will still be prepared to take the risk.

The announcement states:

any adult migrant who crosses the Channel will now be at risk of return under the pilot scheme if their claim for asylum is considered inadmissible. Immigration Enforcement have set aside space at Immigration Removal Centres, while Border Force have an operational strategy ready to identify and process groups of inadmissible migrants for removal.

The “now” indicates that the scheme applies to anyone arriving from 4 August 2025, but I have also seen the Home Office give the date 6 August 20205, so this is unclear.

The process will therefore be that a claim must be deemed inadmissible in order for the person to be returned to France. A person will arrive in the UK and they will have a screening interview where they register their asylum claim. The Home Office will use the information given during this interview to determine whether the person may be referred to the Third Country Unit for consideration of inadmissibility action.

Inadmissibility has been in a state of flux in recent years but the current position is that the process as set out under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is what will apply here. The reason likely to be used by the Home Office to deem most claims inadmissible will be that it was reasonable to expect the person to have claimed asylum in France and they failed to do.

Once a person’s claim has been deemed inadmissible, it will be possible for them to be selected for return to France. The criteria for selection for return to France have not been disclosed and it is unclear whether the Home Office intends to do so.

However they will have a large pool of inadmissible people to choose from and decisions will need to be made somehow, unless they are going to attempt to send everyone back to France, which has certainly not been the message to date. It is difficult to see how this will be manageable without guidance, which will presumably need to be published (eventually the Home Office will learn to stop operating secret policies. Maybe). This scheme has some shared elements with the Dublin scheme, and guidance was published on how that worked.

Who can come to the UK under the agreement, and how?

Yesterday a statement of changes CP:1373 was published, inserting a new Appendix UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme into the immigration rules (APP UEATS) with immediate effect. Unaccompanied children will not be eligible to come to the under this scheme, thereby creating an incentive for children to claim to be adults, in a reversal of the usual “concerns” raised by Tories/Reform.

Applicants must be in France. I’m sure the Home Office has a foolproof way of checking this.

The first stage of the process is for the applicant to submit an expression of interest form (this is a specified form “Register for the UK/European Applicant Transfer scheme”) within set periods of time “application windows” which will be determined by the Home Secretary. If the applicant has previously submitted an expression of interest which was rejected because the person was outside the UK, or where the family unit has changed (unless as a result of birth or death) or entry clearance was refused, the form will be void, so care must be taken to get these right. Applications will also be void if the person travels to the UK without permission while the application is pending.

Applicants must not have been granted protection by another country and must not have permission to be in France. They will have to upload a copy of a passport or other document and a recent photograph which satisfactorily establishes their identity and nationality, so anyone who does not have these documents will be automatically excluded from the scheme.

After receipt of the expression of interest form, the Home Office will apply the prioritisation criteria as set out in the guidance to the scheme (yet to be published) to determine who will then be selected. Apart from the reference to the prioritisation criteria, there is no provision in the immigration rules for any sort of merits assessment at this stage.

Where a person is selected, the Home Office will then apply for entry clearance on their behalf. The grounds for refusal as set out in part 9 of the immigration rules will apply. In addition to this, if a person has entered or arrived in the UK previously without permission, they will be rejected on suitability grounds.

Successful applicants will be provided with a travel document to enter the UK and will be granted entry clearance for three months subject to conditions that they are unable to work, study or claim public funds. The intention appears to be that they claim asylum during that time and then enter the system and will be processed as usual.

The scheme will be closed once the number of people the UK is required to accept under the agreement has been reached.

Leave outside the rules applications

The leave outside the rules application process set by the Home Office requires people to use the application form that is closest to their circumstances. In light of this, it is important to note that the guidance on leave outside the rules has been updated to explicitly exclude the UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme expression of interest application form from being used to apply for leave outside the rules:

Applicants should also not use the UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme expression of interest application form to apply for LOTR. This is a pilot scheme, and the form only exists for an expression of interest application under the pilot. Only the UK/European Applicant Transfer Scheme rules will be considered when this form is used.

What happens next?

France is not Rwanda and returns are likely to happen. The bigger question will be if there is any deterrent effect – I am certainly sceptical.

There is still quite a bit of the detail missing. For example, when will the first application window open for expressions of interest? How long will these windows be open for? It is easy to envisage a Glastonbury style rush for places, with application windows closing very quickly due to volume of applications. Will the Home Office wait until returns have actually taken place before bringing people over from France? As it will be more difficult to return people who do not want go to France rather than to bring willing people to the UK, I assume this is how it will work, but it is unclear.

The announcement said that “the UK government is also prepared to robustly defend any legal challenges to removal within the initial trial phase”. Legal challenges will be more difficult than for Rwanda, however there are still likely to be grounds on which some people can resist removal to France. For example, if the inadmissibility decision was wrong, if people have family in the UK, or had experiences in France which make it inappropriate to send them back. The already long standing concerns around the Home Office wrongly assessing children as adults may be of particular relevance given unaccompanied children cannot be sent to France under the agreement.

I think it is useful, when considering who will be returned, to remember that in the Rwanda litigation the individual decisions were quashed by the High Court because the Home Office had made such a hash of them to the extent that even that very anti-claimant judgment did not uphold those decisions. We know that Home Office decision making is poor and if this remains the case it won’t really matter how “robustly” the government tries to defend unlawful decisions.

Procedural fairness will also be important, and this post is worth revisiting on that point, although the process is different under this scheme than it was for Rwanda. The biggest hurdle may end up being the Home Office’s own self imposed deadline of 14 days to make the request to France.