Opinion divided on EU asylum pact ahead of vote

After years of crises as EU countries struggled to manage the increasing number of migrant arrivals in the bloc, the ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’, first proposed by the European Commission in September 2020, was aimed at establishing a common approach on migration and providing clarity.

Whether that can be achieved will be tested this Wednesday (April 10) when the 705-seat Parliament votes on the package of proposals.

Over the past three years, many of the tensions and divisions between member countries over the Pact have been ironed out.

Most aspects still face strong opposition from NGOs, migrant charities and rights organizations, which say it will undermine human rights.

The reforms also continue to divide opinion within the European legislature, for different reasons, from the far right to the far left of the political spectrum.

Also read: EU migration pact: What’s in the plan?

Rules enable EU to ‘regain control’ of migration

Largely in favor of the draft Pact is the main political group in the Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).

“After years of impasse, the new migration rules allow us to regain control over our external borders and reduce pressure on the EU,” the EPP leader Manfred Weber was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

“State authorities, not smugglers, have to decide who enters the European Union,” Weber added.

Most parties, including human rights organizations, have welcomed the Pact’s “solidarity mechanism,” which requires all EU countries to help southern border states such as Italy and Greece by either taking in some of the asylum seekers or providing an equivalent financial contribution.

A French Member of the European Parliament, Fabienne Keller, who was involved in the drafting one of the texts, called the pact “very balanced” and “a big improvement over the current situation.”

“There are better checks on flows of irregular migration through the border procedures and more solidarity,” she said.

But she added that the topic was “hugely inflammatory” and criticized far-right MEPs for “trying to panic everybody” over the changes.

Also read: More than half of Europeans disapprove of EU migration policy

Left highlights risks

One of the Pact’s provisions to send asylum-seekers to “safe” third countries remains a cause for concern to some, like left-wing MEP, Raphael Glucksmann. The French politician said it could mean that those who were entitled to asylum in Europe would be at risk of being sent to transit countries outside the bloc.

Glucksmann also criticized a compromise under which some EU countries would be able to offset their financial obligations under the solidarity mechanism if they helped pay for tougher border security in another EU country.

“That upholds the idea of a ‘safe third country’ which would apply to some countries that are ‘safe’ only by that label,” he said.

“It’s another step towards the outsourcing of our borders.”

Also read: Germany: SPD head rejects idea of sending asylum seekers abroad

Pact too weak for far right

On the far right, MEP Jean-Paul Garraud of France said “the outer borders of the EU are like sieves and nothing has been done to change that.”

Garraud said one of the few changes supported by the far right is a system to take the biometric data of each arriving asylum seeker and put it into an EU database called Eurodac. However, he added that it would do little to stop mass irregular immigration.

“These mechanisms are just smokescreens,” Garraud told AFP.

“They will be ineffective and won’t be able to be applied given the scale of the migration flows.”

Final steps

Wednesday’s vote will not be the last step for the pact, as the technical application of its procedures still needs to be defined, MEP Fabienne Keller told the AFP.

They include how to organize the border centers and supply them with sufficient resources, translators and police officers.

Then, even if the pact is fully adopted and all the procedures have been worked out, it won’t come into effect until 2026.

With AFP