After years of fruitless negotiations, the European Pact on Migration and Asylum is much closer to seeing the light of day. The EU interior ministers have reached this Thursday a minimum agreement to create a permanent mechanism for the distribution of migrants, whose objective is redeploy at least 30,000 people a year between the Member States and thus alleviate the pressure suffered by the front-line countries at the external border, such as Spain, Italy or Greece.
The mechanism will be voluntary, but Member States that refuse to accept migrants will have to pay a penalty of 20,000 euros per person or provide some other kind of help. That is, the agreement establishes an à la carte solidarity system.
On the other hand, the new rules impose additional burdens on frontline countries, which will have to introduce a new mandatory border control procedure to identify and record all persons trying to enter illegally. A procedure that NGOs denounce could lead to the creation of refugee camps on the external borders of the EU, similar to those that already exist on the Greek islands.
[El fracaso de las cuotas voluntarias de migrantes en la UE: sólo 34 traslados desde España]
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has denied this extreme. “There will be no extraordinary measures of deprivation of liberty in any way and that affect fundamental rights”, says Grande-Marlaska. In his opinion, the reform achieves an adequate balance between the principles of solidarity and responsibility in migration management.
Recognizing the capacity constraints of frontline countries, the agreement sets a maximum limit of 30,000 people per year for the border procedure throughout the EU. Once their assigned quota is exceeded, Member States will be exempted from applying it. The Interior Commissioner, the Swedish Ylva Johanssonhas announced an injection of 1,000 million European funds to improve reception capacity.
Despite the absence of mandatory refugee quotasPoland and Hungary have voted against the agreement, claiming it represents a return to the refugee crisis of 2015. “Politically and pragmatically, this mechanism is unacceptable to us“, said the Polish Undersecretary of the Interior, Bartosz Grodecki.
The radical right-wing Law and Justice government argues that it has already taken in more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees since the outbreak of the war in Russia. And he complains that he will be punished “with a fine” of 20,000 euros per person if he refuses to receive the migrants that correspond to him. “There will be no social acceptance”has pointed out the minister.
For its part, Hungary Viktor Orban maintains that the new distribution system supposes a “Letter of Invitation” for migrants that will cause a pull effect. “The important thing is to stop migrants at the border, not let them enter the EU and eliminate the causes of migration in the countries of origin,” said the Hungarian representative, Bence Retvari.
Italy is the key
The Swedish presidency had already discounted the ‘no’ from Poland and Hungary and concentrated all its efforts on trying to add Italy, reluctant to the end, with up to two offers with additional changes.
The Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosiclaimed more guarantees that the migrant distribution mechanism will work, since the experimental system that was launched in 2022 to relocate 10,000 migrants within a year “has failed.” Piantedosi also called for more flexibility in the border control procedure to ease the burden it represents for Italy.
after a marathon day of 12 hours of negotiations, the radical right-wing government of Giorgia Meloni has given its approval to the compromise solution, which has made it possible to reach the qualified majority required to approve the reform. Bulgaria, Malta, Slovakia and Lithuania abstained.
However, the agreement of the interior ministers is not yet the end of the road. The new legislation still has to be negotiated and agreed with the European Parliament. A dialogue that Spain will have to lead in his capacity as rotating presidency of the EU from 1 July.
