ATHENS — Greece and Germany want to establish facilities in Africa to receive people deported from Europe, Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris said Wednesday.

Speaking to Greece’s public broadcaster ERT, Plevris said: “discussions are underway with safe African countries that will accept illegal immigrants whom we cannot return to their homelands.”

He added that the talks are not being pursued under the auspices of the European Union but as an enterprise led by individual countries.

“Germany has taken a serious initiative and we have officially expressed our interest in participating in it. If these centers are located outside the European continent, they will act as a deterrent to migrants,” he said.

An official from the German interior ministry told POLITICO: “During their meeting on November 4, the two ministers identified a shared interest in so-called ‘innovative solutions’ for reducing illegal migration and also discussed the possibility of implementing these in a group of member states. They are currently working together at the European level on the necessary legal basis for the return regulation.”

Europe’s home affairs ministers convened in Luxembourg last month to hash out strict new rules on migration to the continent, including the creation of return hubs for failed applicants, but no agreements were reached.

Greece has adopted a hard line on migration in recent years. Last summer it presented other EU governments with what it called its strictest plan yet to deter migrants, and it is currently pushing for “return hubs” located outside Europe.

Plevris said that other countries beside Greece are also interested in the plan. The Netherlands, for example, struck an agreement in September with Uganda to cooperate on returning rejected asylum seekers via the East African nation as a transit point, but the scheme would only apply to people from countries near to Uganda itself.

Greece’s current idea, as Plevris described it, is similar to Italy’s stalled project of intercepting and detaining asylum seekers and processing them in Albania.

Since the inauguration of two centers in Albania last year, that project — which was promoted by right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — has drawn accolades from European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, both of whom expressed interest in replicating the approach. However, the initiative remains in judicial limbo over whether processing migrants in third countries is in line with EU law.

Plevris expressed certainty the legal issues will be sorted, but said an additional problem is that “Albania’s idea is not entirely a deterrent. If [the hubs were located] outside the European continent, it would be a firm deterrent.

“Imagine taking an Egyptian and sending him to Uganda.”

Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report.