The European Parliament adopted a new policy called the "Pact on Migration and Asylum" last 10 April 2024, clearing a major hurdle on its way to becoming European Union law. The package of regulations and directives seeks to update EU policies on migrants and refugees.
The pact is a legacy of the 2015 migration crisis when EU countries saw more than 1 million people claim asylum after arriving, mainly by boat, to European countries. The majority were fleeing violence and war in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Front-line European countries, including Greece and Italy, were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, prompting anti-migrant violence and a backlash from far-right political parties.
During the crisis, some European states, including Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia, closed their borders, effectively trapping 60,000 people in Greece living in tent cities.
Substantively, the new pact consists of six major reforms – all of which focus on securitizing borders and making it easier to deport people, with, critics argue, little protection for migrants and asylum seekers.
The first regulation expands the EU’s biometric database for asylum seekers, EURODAC, to include the fingerprints, face photos and biographical information of all individuals aged 6 and above. Previously, the database included only fingerprints – not images or biographic details – of people above the age of 14. The pact also makes it easier for police to access the database.
Second, the asylum and migration management regulation, or AMMR, continues the Dublin Regulation requiring asylum applications to be reviewed by the first member state they enter.
This means that Greece and Italy will continue to process most asylum claims. But the AMMR does allow transfers to a third country based on an applicant’s family ties, prior residency or education in another member state.
These first two regulations will have immediate legal impact when endorsed by the the 27 EU member countries in the European Council before June 2024.
The other four directives must be incorporated into EU member states’ domestic laws within the next two years. Together, these other four directives work to make it harder for people to make asylum claims in the EU.
For example, the pact institutionalizes the policy that "hotspot" reception centers on islands off Greece and Italy are transit zones and thus not EU territory. This effectively excises many Mediterranean islands from EU territory in order to block asylum seekers from their full rights.
Another directive revises asylum procedures to fast-track deportations of people who have traveled via a "safe third country" or if they are from a country with recognition rates – the proportion of asylum applications that are approved from a given country of origin – below 20 percent.
Human rights groups criticize the pact because fast-track deportations are based on group characteristics, instead of individual review. They claim that the reforms also undermine the right of appeal – sometimes deporting people before an appeals decision is finalized – and expand detention.