Insight
The new migration and asylum pact: Smoke and mirrors? by Luigi Scazzieri, 23 May 2024 The EU’s new asylum rules are unlikely to make the current system more humane and effective, or less controversial. The EU should rethink its approach to co-operation with third countries. In April this year the European Parliament agreed to a reform of the Union’s rulebook on migration and asylum, approving the different legislative files that make up the so-called New Migration and Asylum Pact. The Pact was finally approved by member-states around a month later, in mid-May. It is the result of almost a decade of failed efforts to reform the Union’s migration system after the 2015-16 migration crisis, which saw over 1.6 million irregular arrivals into the EU, many from Syria. Member-states along the EU’s external borders were unable to deal with the influx on their own and allowed migrants to go north to countries such as Germany and Sweden. The EU was eventually able to end the crisis by closing off the Balkan route and by striking controversial agreements with countries like Turkey and Libya to stop migrants from reaching Europe. However, the crisis had a lasting impact on European politics, fuelling anti-immigration populist forces in many member-states and pitting EU countries against each other. For years, reform of the EU’s asylum system proved elusive as it seemed impossible to find a balance between the interests of border member-states and other member-states, and between migration doves and hawks. The pressure to clinch a deal before the European elections in June and signal that the EU had been able to overcome its divisions on migration eventually pushed the Pact over the line. However, the Pact will be difficult to fully implement and is unlikely to make the EU’s migration system more humane and effective. It also won’t make migration less of a controversial issue between the member-states or in broader political debates. To do all these things, the EU would need to rethink the way it approaches co-operation with third countries, shifting from a focus on migration control to forging genuine partnerships with migrants’ countries of origin and transit.
CER INSIGHT: THE NEW MIGRATION AND ASYLUM PACT: SMOKE AND MIRRORS? 23 May 2024
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