After seven years of negotiations, European countries have reached an agreement – described as “historic” – on the new Pact for Asylum and Migrants. During the Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg, they were updated procedures for border and immigration management: It will change both the way asylum seekers are treated at the border and the way they are relocated across Europe.
According to the new regulation, all states will have to participate in the redistribution of migrants. Alternativelygovernments will be able to choose to pay 20,000 euros for each migrant not accepted into the common fund for the management of external borders (‘compulsory solidarity’).
All asylum applications will have to be examined with a “border procedure” within 12 weeks, and the state will have responsibility for migrants arriving on its territory for 24 months (previously there were only 12). Furthermore, Member States will be able to autonomously define a country of departure or transit as “safe” and, therefore, they will be able to carry out repatriations also to a transit country. Border countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain will be required to strengthen controls to avoid “secondary movements”, i.e. transfers of asylum-seeking migrants to Northern European countries.
Poland and Hungary voted against the new regulation, while Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia and Bulgaria abstained.
«Italy has obtained consensus on all the proposals put forward. First of all, we avoided the hypothesis that Italy and all the Member States of first entry were paid to keep irregular migrants in their territories», explained Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. «Italy will not be the collection center for immigrants on behalf of Europe. We have obtained the creation of a new European fund for third countries of origin and transit of flows for the external dimension and in the system, as a compulsory solidarity measure complementary to relocations”.
The new regulation will be discussed by the European Parliament in the coming weeks, and there will be time until the first months of 2024 for definitive approval.
Source: Vanity Fair
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