The European Parliament has approved the Migration and Asylum Pact, after a long and complex legislative process. The new package of measures, of which up to nine different regulations are part, already has the definitive green light, although with a narrow margin in some provisions that has led political groups and countries to hold their breath until the last minute.
Almost 9 years after the refugee crisis broke out in 2015, the migration pact is almost a reality, pending ratification by the States, predictably, at the end of the month. It has not been an easy pact: it has been on the verge of derailing several times, with multiple blockages, but it ended with an agreement in principle between the European institutions (Council, Parliament and Commission) at the end of last year under the mandate of the presidency Spanish of the Council of the EU.
“It has been more than ten years in total, but we have kept our word. It is a balance between solidarity and responsibility,” said Interior Commissioner Ylva Johanson after the vote.
In the European Parliament, there was a feeling among legislators that the pact was far from perfect, but among the large majority parties there was also the perception that the status quo was much worse. “Some issues are difficult to swallow (…) but if Europe is not capable of acting at the European level, it will only foster chaos, which is why I hope that this pact is adopted,” acknowledged the German MEP, Gabriele Bischoff, of the social democratic group.
In this sense, one of the negotiators of the pact, the Spanish socialist Juan Fernando López-Aguilar, also admitted that there were “limitations” and “concessions” when negotiating, but that above all it was necessary to “look to the future” and that the only option was its approval.
The new agreement toughens the conditions for migrants who enter community territory, with very strict controls, in which their fingerprints will be taken upon arrival, also for minors from 6 years old, including facial images.
The objective is for applications to be processed much faster, a maximum of seven days, and for people with false documents or who come from countries with asylum recognition rates of less than 20% to be directly denied entry. While their requests are being processed, these people must remain in closed facilities and thus facilitate their return in case they are denied refugee status, a process that must last six months and be returned in a maximum of 12 weeks.
The agreement also contemplates a principle of ‘mandatory solidarity’ in which all countries must contribute in one way or another to the management of the arrival of migrants. Thus, it is established that when an EU country is under migratory pressure, due to a large arrival of asylum seekers, the rest of the Member States must distribute themselves to a certain number of people. At least 30,000 people a year must relocate among the Twenty-Seven, but they will not be obliged.
Those countries that refuse may contribute 20,000 euros per year per asylum seeker or by sending material and/or equipment to the country of arrival. The pact also covers how to act in the event of a crisis, in the face of a large arrival of asylum seekers, in which solidarity between countries will be requested. Although the European Parliament always requested mandatory reception fees in this case, it was never an option for the States. When it was attempted in the past, during the mandate of former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in 2016, it failed.
From the political groups in the European Parliament, the negotiations had been abuzz in recent days. In European institutions it is often repeated almost like a mantra that “nothing is closed until everything is truly closed.”
And in this last year of the legislature, this phrase has almost had to be repeated more than once, because several laws have been blown up when it had already been previously agreed upon in the three-way negotiation between the Commission, Parliament and the Council. “The extreme right does not want a solution, it wants chaos,” warned the liberal Dutch MEP Sophie N’t Velt, asking her colleagues to vote; while the Greens, who opposed the vote, considered that “a no agreement is better than a bad agreement.”
The uncertainty has been especially visible with this legislative package, bitterly criticized by the extreme right for being too soft and by the left for not respecting human rights. The feeling of pre-electoral climate was also noticeable, just two months before the elections, everyone tries to send a political message to their electorate and in an issue as controversial as migration (in fact, it was, in the last elections of 2019, the main concern of Europeans) many MEPs felt how much was at stake.
For this reason, a few hours before the vote, MEPs from different political groups did not want to consider everything closed and did not even want to venture what was going to happen. There were divisions in the large groups, but in the end, as expected, more delicate regulations, such as crisis management, made the vote tighter. Among the socialists, the Italian delegation rejected the pact; while Georgia Meloni’s group, in the European Conservatives and Reformists, a group to which Vox also belongs, generally supported him; and the French delegation of the popular group was also very divided.
The expectation was maximum inside the building, but also outside with a demonstration at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels and with the vote that had to be delayed briefly due to the protest of some activists who were in the chamber, in which they shouted “this pact kills, vote no”, to applause from the left-wing benches.
The prevailing feeling in the European Parliament was, after the vote, that despite being an unenthusiastic pact, there has been a struggle to find a balance, in which the status quo was always worse, with the fear that the extreme right — in which the polls clearly work in their favor with an increase in their representation in the next Parliament—they will profit from the failure.
