Paying the warlords: The cynical economics of EU border control in Libya

As the European Union seeks to further fortify its external borders, its Home Affairs Council met in Luxembourg on June 8 to finalize a common policy on establishing controversial “return hubs” in third countries under an overhauled Return Regulation framework. But as EU interior ministers pushed to export asylum processing outside European borders by 2027, the real-world consequences of Europe’s externalization agenda were exploding on the streets of Tripoli, Libya—one of the primary transit routes for migrants seeking to reach Europe. Outraged local residents blockaded the entrances to the UNHCR headquarters and IOM offices with mounds of sand, protesting what they view as a deliberate attempt to turn their country into a permanent containment zone for Europe’s rejected migrants. The timing is far from coincidental: to make these return centers operational, European policymakers rely heavily on a fractured North Africa to absorb the human pressure. This raises a central, uncomfortable question that Brussels continuously avoids: does the European Union actually prefer a politically divided, institutionally weak Libya, precisely because a fragmented state is easier to manipulate into serving as Europe’s default border police? 

To understand the rage that brought trucks of sand to the gates of UN agencies in Al-Sarraj and Janzour, west of Tripoli, one must look at how ordinary Libyans perceive the mechanics of European policy on the ground. For over a decade, successive deals between Brussels, individual EU member states, and various Libyan factions have effectively turned the country into a northern buffer zone. Through millions of euros in funding for the Libyan Coast Guard and interdiction programs, the EU has successfully forced tens of thousands of intercepted migrants back onto Libyan shores, where they remain trapped in a legal and operational limbo. To a public already grappling with fifteen years of political fragmentation, hyperinflation, and decaying public infrastructure, the expanding presence of nearly a million migrants—and Europe’s relentless push for external processing hubs—does not look like humanitarian management. Instead, it is widely viewed as a deliberate campaign to transform Libya from a temporary transit corridor into a permanent dumping ground for Europe’s unwanted asylum seekers. In their outrage, Libyans point directly to the 2017 Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding—a bilateral deal wherein Rome, backed by EU funding, funneled millions to Tripoli-based authorities and affiliated security forces to intercept and forcibly turn back any migrants attempting to cross the Central Mediterranean.

Libya’s institutional chaos is not a failure of European policy; for Brussels, it is a strategic asset. A unified, sovereign Libya with a centralized government, an accountable parliament, and a functioning judicial system would possess the political leverage to reject being converted into Europe’s offshore holding pen.

A single, recognized authority could demand strictly enforceable bilateral terms, enforce domestic human rights standards, or simply close its borders to illegal European pushbacks.

Instead, political division—leaving the country split between rival administrations in Tripoli and Benghazi—creates a convenient  legal and governance vacuum. European officials can bypass transparent state-to-state treaties, choosing instead to negotiate piecemeal, transactional arrangements with competing warlords, militias, and interior ministry officials who rely on European funds and legitimacy to bolster their local power.

In this cold equation, the EU appears utterly indifferent to the fate of intercepted migrants who are forcibly dragged from the sea back into Libya’s notoriously overcrowded detention facilities. This cynicism was laid bare by former UN Special Envoy to Libya Ghassan Salamé. Following his resignation, Salamé recalled on the June 2020, Oslo Forum’s podcast The Mediator’s Studio how European leaders dismissed his warnings about leaving Libya to fend for itself. When he confronted EU powers over abandoning the country to collapse, their response was blunt: why should they worry as long as migrants were not arriving on European shores in greater numbers? Ultimately, Europe’s overriding goal is simply to keep migrants out at all costs, regardless of the human suffering that unfolds once they are dumped back onto Libyan soil.

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While official EU proposals and political debates on “return hubs” carefully avoid explicitly naming Libya—preferring to float agreements with states like Albania or Kosovo—the country’s ongoing political chaos and structural weakness since 2011 make it the ultimate off-book containment center. Brussels cannot formally designate Libya as a “safe third country” without violating its own human rights laws and triggering immediate legal challenges in European courts. Instead, European policymakers exploit Libya’s post-2011 fragmentation to achieve the exact same result informally. By funding local security actors and maritime interdictions, Europe gets all the operational benefits of an offshore processing and detention hub without the legal burden of officially naming it one. In effect, Libya’s state of perpetual political vulnerability has made it Europe’s most effective, unacknowledged dumping ground—a place where EU containment goals are realized precisely because there is no unified government with the power to resist.

For Libya itself, this toxic dynamic has created a trap with no clear exit. By converting the country into a permanent waiting room for asylum seekers, Europe has accelerated Libya’s internal unraveling. The local outrage that recently manifested in sand-blockades outside UN headquarters in Tripoli is no isolated flare-up; it reflects a deepening resentment among a population exhausted by chronic economic instability and national paralysis. Everyday Libyans increasingly view international humanitarian organizations not as neutral aid providers, but as administrative arms enforcing Europe’s border control on Libyan soil. Meanwhile, entrenched local power factions—from political figures to militia commanders—treat bilateral deals with Brussels as vital sources of political legitimacy and international immunity.

By securing these arrangements, these actors eagerly transform themselves into the paid guardians of Europe’s border regime, consolidating their own rule at the direct expense of the nation’s sovereignty.

Europe’s policy has effectively financialized Libyan instability, rendering peace and state-building politically unlucrative for the key decision-makers on the ground.

In the end, Brussels’ strategy of exploiting a fractured Libya is a short-sighted gamble built on a dangerous delusion—and a bitter historical irony. In 2010, when Muammar Gaddafi famously demanded €5 billion a year from the EU to stop Sub-Saharan migration at the Tripoli EU-Africa Summit, European leaders balked at the price tag. Today, Brussels effectively pays that ransom anyway—not to a centralized state capable of governance, but piecemeal to a constellation of competing factions, militias, and warlords fighting for a cut of Europe’s cash. Externalizing border management to a fragmented state does not solve the root causes of regional migration; it merely hides them behind a wall of violence, extortion, and institutional decay—and only temporarily, before the crisis resurfaces in explosive outbreaks of anger across Libyan cities. By using financial inducements to covertly transform Libya into an informal offshore holding pen, the European Union has sabotaged the country’s prospects for sovereign recovery while shortsightedly compromising its own security, given Libya’s immediate proximity to Southern Europe. As long as European leaders prioritize short-term migration suppression over genuine regional stability, the price of engineered chaos will inevitably be paid on both sides of the Mediterranean.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.