European Parliament Approves Migration Policy Reform

The European Parliament has marginally passed the wide-reaching reform of the European Union’s migration and asylum policy, which was preceded by uncertainty due to the growing voices of rejection from both the left and right.

“We have listened, we have acted and we have delivered on one of the main concerns of people across Europe,” said Roberta Metsola, the Parliament’s president.

“This is a historic day,” she declared.

The reform, named the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which encompasses a set of five separate but intertwined pieces of legislation, just needs the final green light from member states, which is expected at the end of the month.

The five new migration laws

The five laws contained in the New Pact and approved on Wednesday by MEPs are:

The Screening Regulation envisions a pre-entry procedure to swiftly examine an asylum seeker’s profile and collect basic information such as nationality, age, fingerprints, and facial image. Health and security checks will also be carried out.

The amended Eurodac Regulation updates Eurodac, a large-scale database that will store the biometric evidence collected during the screening process. The database will shift from counting applications to counting applicants and prevent the same person from filing multiple claims. The minimal age for collecting fingerprints will be lowered from 14 to 6 years.

The amended Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR) sets two possible steps for claimants. The first of these is the traditional asylum procedure, which is lengthy and a fast-tracked border procedure, meant to last a maximum of twelve weeks. The border procedure will apply to migrants who pose a risk to national security, provide misleading information, or come from countries with low recognition rates, such as Morocco, Pakistan, and India. These migrants will not be allowed to enter the country’s territory and instead be kept at facilities on the border, creating a “legal fiction of non-entry.”

The Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (AMMR) establishes a system of “mandatory solidarity” that will offer member states three options to manage migration flows. This will include relocating a certain number of asylum seekers, paying €20,000 for each claimant they refuse to relocate, or financing operational support. Brussels aims at 30,000 relocations per year but insists the system will not force any country to accept refugees as long as they contribute one of the other two options.

The Crisis Regulation foresees exceptional rules that will be triggered when the bloc’s asylum system is threatened by a sudden and massive arrival of refugees, as was the case during the 2015 to 2016 crisis, or by a situation of force majeure, like the COVID-19 pandemic. In these circumstances, national authorities will be allowed to apply tougher measures, including longer periods of registration and detention, and the Commission will be empowered to request additional “solidarity” measures.

Migration poses a complex challenge for Greece

Last month, Greece’s Immigration Minister expressed concern about the recent spike in the number of undocumented migrants arriving in the southern islands of Crete and Gavdos.

“The flow of migrants from eastern Libya is small, but with an increasing trend, which worries and concerns us, and that is why we are taking a series of initiatives to deal with this new front,” the Minister of Immigration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis told SKAI at the time.

He was speaking after a boat carrying 91 migrants reached Gavdos, a small island south of Crete and the southernmost Greek island. A coast guard statement said the migrants, who were found on a beach on Gavdos in early March, were being taken to reception areas on Crete.

They are believed to have set off from the coast of eastern Libya about 170 nautical miles to the south. Their nationalities were not made public. Local authorities on Gavdos and Crete said they are seeing a spike in the arrival of people attempting the long and dangerous crossing from Africa.