The Netherlands wants to sign an offshore migrant processing deal with Uganda to host its rejected asylum seekers before they are deported to their home countries.

“We are open to any discussions,” Jeje Odongo, Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister, told the Dutch broadcaster NOS.

The plan, which is similar to the UK’s abandoned Rwanda scheme for asylum seekers, emerged as European Union leaders met in Brussels on Thursday for a European Council summit.

The gathering was set to be dominated by talks over migration and how to speed up the return of failed asylum seekers.

Amongst the ideas to be discussed are “return hubs” – camps set up outside of the EU for rejected asylum seekers awaiting deportation.

A total of 484,000 non-EU citizens were ordered to leave the bloc last year, of whom only about 91,500, less than 20 per cent,  were effectively returned, according to the Eurostat agency.