The European Union (EU) managed this Wednesday (20) to reach an agreement on the migration and asylum pact, with which it intends to manage the flows of immigrants to its territory in a predictable and orderly manner.
“The Council and Parliament make a major breakthrough in reform to improve the EU migration and asylum system. A political agreement has been reached on the five expedients of the new EU pact on migration and asylum”, announced the Spanish presidency of the EU Council on its official account on X.
In addition to the years of intense negotiations, the last two days and two nights were crucial in overcoming the last obstacles of the complex legislative package that the European Commission proposed in 2020. “It is a historic moment,” he said in a video published on his X account the Interior Commissioner, Ylva Johansson, while the Community vice-president, Margaritis Schinas, highlighted on the same social network that the EU had finally managed to put all the pieces together after “a long journey”.
“The Migration and Asylum Pact is in itself a success in that it is a step forward in relation to the unsatisfactory and unsustainable situation from which we have come. Once it comes into force, we will finally have a European response to the migratory event and its challenges, especially in crisis situations”, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, president of the European Parliamentary Commission on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), told EFE ).
In this way, “the principle enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Article 80 – solidarity and equitable distribution of responsibilities between Member States – is transferred to directly binding European legislation”, said López Aguilar, rapporteur of the proposal of the regulation on crisis and force majeure situations, one of the five axes of the pact on migration and asylum.
“After years of political impasse, today we reached agreement on a common European response to the migration challenge. The new rules will allow us to regain control of our external borders and reduce migratory pressure into the EU,” said Swedish MEP Tomas Tobé, rapporteur of the regulation on asylum and migration management.
The agreement reached in the early hours of this Wednesday between representatives of the presidency of the EU Council (held by Spain until the end of the year), the European Parliament and the European Commission, still needs to be formalized and adopted in the first half of 2024, before of the European elections that will be held in the 27 countries of the community bloc between June 6th and 9th.
The complex migration package aims to equip the bloc's countries with a predictable mechanism to respond to existing needs, including border protection, reception of refugees and the return of those who do not have the right to stay in the EU.
The idea of reforming European migration policy began to take shape in 2016, when almost two million irregular immigrants and asylum seekers arrived in the region fleeing the war in Syria.
The reform then proposed by the Community Executive chaired by Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker did not obtain the necessary support from the Member States due to disagreements on how to apply the principle of solidarity and share responsibilities within the scope of asylum in a fair way.
In September 2020, the European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen attempted to relaunch reform by presenting a new pact on migration and asylum, which offered a comprehensive approach to strengthen and integrate policies on migration, asylum and border management.
Mandatory refugee quotas were eliminated following the failure of the previous Commission and a move towards “à la carte” solidarity, which will allow EU countries to voluntarily welcome refugees or otherwise participate in efforts, such as by financing construction of reception centers.
The approval of the agreement was celebrated by Germany, one of the bloc's countries suffering the consequences of uncontrolled migration. For the Berlin government, the decision was classified as “urgent and necessary”.
The pact was released one day after France also approved its own migration law, which included an alliance between President Emmanuel Macron and the French right.
According to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), in the first 11 months of 2023, more than 355,000 crossings were recorded across the bloc's external borders, which represents an annual increase of 17%.
According to the European Union Asylum Agency (EUAA), by the end of the year, asylum applications could exceed the one million mark.
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