The European Council on Tuesday adopted a landmark reform of the European asylum and migration system, establishing a set of rules aimed at managing arrivals in an orderly way, creating efficient and uniform procedures, and ensuring fair burden sharing between member states.
“The asylum and migration pact will ensure a fairer and stronger migration system that makes a concrete difference on the ground,” said Nicole de Moor, Belgian State Secretary for Asylum and Migration. “These new rules will make the European asylum system more effective and increase solidarity between member states. The European Union will also continue its close cooperation with third countries to tackle the root causes of irregular migration. Only jointly can we find responses to the global migration challenge.”
The Council adopted a total of 10 legislative acts which reform the entire European framework for asylum and migration management. The screening regulation will allow national authorities to refer irregular migrants and asylum applicants at an external border to the relevant procedure and ensure that identification, security and vulnerability checks, and health evaluations are carried out uniformly.
The New Pact, among its various provisions, foresees the implementation of more rigorous rules to broaden the assessment of applicants, conduct health and security evaluations, accelerate the review procedures, and offer complimentary counselling. Its primary innovation is a “compulsory solidarity” system that presents governments with three alternatives for handling asylum seekers: relocate a specific quantity, contribute €20,000 for each individual they decline, or fund operational assistance.
The preliminary objective is to achieve 30,000 relocations annually.
As anticipated, Poland and Hungary, staunch critics, opposed the entirety of the legislative package. Since its introduction in 2020, these two nations have persistently opposed the concept of “mandatory solidarity,” erroneously asserting that it would compel them to accept migrants against their wishes.
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both exhibiting skepticism, opted to abstain in the majority of cases. Austria, on the other hand, voted against the Crisis Regulation.
The updated Eurodac database will gather more accurate and complete data, including biometric data, on various categories of migrants. This will help inform policy making and enhance the control of irregular migration and unauthorized movements.
The asylum procedure regulation streamlines the European asylum procedure and introduces a mandatory border procedure in well-defined cases. The return border procedure regulation deals with the returns of people whose application in this border procedure is rejected. The asylum and migration management regulation determines which member state is responsible for the examination of applications for international protection and introduces a fair sharing of responsibility among the member states for the first time.
The qualification regulation and reception conditions directive lay down uniform rules for the criteria for granting international protection and the standards for the reception of asylum seekers. This should also help to reduce secondary movements between member states.
Finally, the resettlement regulation deals with legal and safe pathways to the EU by establishing common rules for resettlement and humanitarian admission.
A major new feature of the reform is the mandatory border procedure. This procedure will apply to certain categories of asylum seekers, for instance, those coming from countries with low asylum recognition rates. The aim of the procedure is to make a quick assessment at the EU’s external borders of whether applications are unfounded or inadmissible. People in the asylum border procedure are not authorized to enter the territory of the EU.
The new rules clarify which member state will be responsible for an asylum application, for instance in cases where a person has a family member in an EU country or when the asylum request is not made in the country where the asylum seeker first arrives in the EU.
Another important aspect of the migration system reform is the introduction of a solidarity mechanism to ensure a fairer sharing of responsibility. The new rules combine mandatory solidarity to support member states dealing with a strong influx of migrants with flexibility as regards the type of contributions. Member states’ contributions can consist of relocations, financial contributions or, where agreed with the benefiting member state, alternative solidarity measures (e.g. providing border guards or helping with the deployment of reception centres).
In order to better deal with situations of crisis (mass arrivals and instrumentalisation) and force majeure, member states can derogate from certain rules and request enhanced solidarity from other EU countries. Possible derogations apply for instance to deadlines for registering asylum applicants and the duration of the border procedure.
The crisis mechanism is used only in exceptional circumstances and for the time strictly necessary to address situations of crisis or force majeure. It is subject to authorisation from the Council.
Member states will now have two years to put the laws that were adopted today into practice. The European Commission will soon present a common implementation plan to provide assistance to member states in this process.
The asylum procedure regulation, asylum and migration management regulation, Eurodac regulation, screening regulation and crisis regulation are components of the new pact on migration and asylum, which the Commission (Commissioner Ylva Johansson) proposed on 23 September 2020.
The reception conditions directive, qualification regulation and EU resettlement framework were initially proposed in 2016.
Overall agreement between the Council presidency and the European Parliament was reached on 20 December 2023. The details of the texts were further fine-tuned in January and at the beginning of February 2024. The European Parliament adopted the pact on 10 April 2024.
