This Wednesday, the European Parliament took a decisive step towards the approval of the Migration and Asylum Pact. The plenary session of the European Parliament has given its approval one by one to the ten regulations that make up the file by a tight margin, in what was one of the last opportunities to give the green light to the pact before the end of the legislature. The new regulation means, in practice, a tightening of migration policy, with the reinforcement of the external borders of the European Union (EU), the signing of agreements with third countries to stop irregular arrivals and a more accelerated procedure for deportations.
Once the text is ratified by the Twenty-Seven in a purely formal procedure, the bloc will have a common policy on migration, an issue that until now European countries managed on their own and which gave rise to important disagreements between member states. The main obstacle in the negotiations between the Member States was found in the crisis mechanism, a tool that the European Commission will be able to activate in the event of massive arrivals to the bloc and that will include solidarity measures with economic compensation, relocation of asylum seekers and aid. in the processing of protection requests for affected countries.
The vote in the European Parliament was preceded by an intense debate in which political groups exchanged their points of view on the new regulations. The Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson, intervened to request a vote in favor of the immigration package. «It is time to fix our system. Our citizens expect us to protect people who come legally to study, work… or those who flee wars and to return as quickly as possible those who do not have the right to stay,” she assured.
The crisis mechanism, he said, will make aid to European countries “mandatory” and not “voluntary” as until now. The pact has already accumulated eight years of legislative work. Four years ago, the regulation was blocked by the Member States and now it is the European Parliament that has the last word, a few months before the European elections that will be held between June 6 and 9. For this reason, the commissioner has asked MEPs to have “courage.” “It's now or never,” she stressed. The Commissioner for the Protection of the European Lifestyle, Margaritis Schinas, has argued for her part that “perfection is always the enemy of progress” and has assured that the migration pact represents “a tangible improvement after years of failures.”
The representatives of the main political groups – the European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democrats (S&D) and the Liberals (Renew) – have advanced in their interventions that would support the ten regulations, which “are not ideal, but they are better than the situation current”. Some MEPs from these formations have distanced themselves and have voted against the pact. The Greens and the Left group, for their part, have stressed that they will vote against the pact, which they consider “takes the EU away from its founding values” and brings it closer to a “fortress” Europe that eliminates the protection of asylum seekers.
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