EU reaches agreement on reform of the bloc’s migration system

The EU (European Union) announced this Wednesday (Dec 20, 2023) that it had reached a political agreement on the new rules for welcoming migrants. The text, called “New Pact on Migration and Asylum”, aims to establish a common management system on the subject and combat illegal immigration.

The initiative still needs to be formally approved by the European Parliament and the European Council, made up of the heads of State and Government of the 27 member countries of the bloc. It should come into force from 2024. The legislation is expected to be completed before the EU elections, scheduled for June 2024.

The pact, presented in September 2020, will change the way EU countries receive, shelter and grant asylum to people arriving in the region. Establishes reforms in adopted migration and asylum policy through 5 main regulations related to the following areas:

• screening of migrants;
• Eurodac, the EU fingerprint database used to identify asylum seekers and illegal migrants;
• asylum procedures;
• asylum and migration management; It is
• crisis and force majeure situations.

Among the changes are the creation of uniform rules related to the identification of people coming from other countries and the development of a common database that collects more accurate and complete data to detect unauthorized movements.

The measure also creates a mandatory solidarity mechanism and stricter controls to help Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, Spain and Greece, which receive the majority of asylum seekers in the bloc.

This means that countries not located within the borders of the European Union must contribute to alleviating migratory pressure. Two options are given to these nations: each must receive 30,000 asylum seekers or make payments of €20,000 (more than R$106,000, according to this Wednesday’s exchange rate) for each asylum request not reallocated to a joint bloc fund. European approach to the issue.

In a statement published this Wednesday (Dec 20), the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stated that the pact will ensure that “there is an effective European response to this challenge” of migration on the continent. Here is the full text (PDF – 30 kB, in English).

“[Isso] It means that it will be Europeans who decide who comes to the EU and who can stay, not smugglers. It means protecting those in need.”, he stated. According to von der Leyen, the bloc’s countries will have “tools to react quickly in crisis situations” if they face a “large number of illegal arrivals”.

The reform of the European Union’s migration and asylum policy gained relevance in 2015, when more than 1 million people – most of them refugees from the war in Syria – arrived in the European bloc via the Mediterranean Sea. In 2022, the EU received more than 962,000 asylum applications, the highest number since 2016.

CRITICAL INTERNATIONAL AMNESTY

The director of Amnesty International’s European institutions office, Eve Geddie, said in a statement that the agreement “will delay European legislation” about asylum “in the coming decades” and will result in a “increased suffering at every stage of a person’s journey to seeking asylum” in the European bloc.

“The pact will almost certainly see more people placed in EU border detention centers, including families with children and people in vulnerable situations. There will be reduced protections,” these.