The EU's new migration pact to enter into force
It took three years of bitter debates and almost a decade to reach an agreement: finally, the European Union (EU) reached a new Pact on Migration and Asylum that will come into force in the first half of the year and will have a two-year transition period so that it can be homogeneously integrated into the 27 EU member states.
This new agreement includes a policy of sharing out quotas for illegal immigrants, as requested by Spain, Italy and Greece, three of the countries with the greatest migratory pressures placed on the map by human traffickers who use well-known routes to introduce dozens of people into the Mediterranean sea lanes every day.
High migratory pressure in Europe
While the EU in general is overflowing with illegal migrants arriving by land, air and sea routes, according to the European Border Agency (Frontex) in 2023, Europe received more than 331,600 illegal immigrants. By the maritime route alone, towards the Canary Islands, Spain received 32,000 arrivals of immigrants in dinghies or makeshift boats to reach its coasts.
Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, acknowledges that the European Commission is well aware of the enormous pressure Europeans are under.
For her part, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, speaks of an enormous test, a human challenge, for the unity of Europeans that requires a search for consensus and solidarity between countries. In addition to the convergence of all to strengthen surveillance and prosecute human traffickers, the Frontex mechanisms will be strengthened.
Key elements of the pact
The new pact will allow countries to have greater operational and management capacity for all these human flows, most of which arrive without speaking the local language, without papers, and almost never provide data such as age or place of origin. European migration laws protect minors from expulsion and encourage their relocation to reception centres; therefore, everyone wants to pass as a minor.
According to Gabriela Baczynska, writing for Reuters, this agreement is a breakthrough, ending a series of ups and downs in European migration policy discussions.
"EU states have been trading blame over new arrivals since more than a million people, mostly fleeing the war in Syria, took the bloc by surprise in 2015," she says.
Baczynska, chief correspondent in Brussels, discusses how Syrian immigration at the time was a watershed for the EU, which from then on tightened its borders and asylum laws and, above all, sought agreements with various countries in the Middle East and North Africa to prevent the outflow of irregular migrants.
What are the main changes in the Pact on Migration and Asylum? First, it resolves the issue of quota allocation: "Each EU country will be allocated a share of the total 30,000 persons that the bloc is expected to receive per year in its migration system. For the allocation, the size of the country, its GDP and its demographic pressure will be taken into account".
The resistance to receiving migrant quotas traditionally shown by eastern EU countries, mainly Hungary and Poland, is remedied in the Pact: countries that are unwilling to receive their respective quotas of illegal immigrants will have to pay 20,000 euros per person rejected per year.
Margaritis Schinas speaks of the success of this great agreement in terms of making solidarity mechanisms more homogeneous among all European partners because there are some countries that have enormous migratory pressure that is suffocating their economies.
"We are also achieving a more expeditious system for a European migration system that in the future will be more efficient and will really welcome those who truly need it... we are going to have a common circuit from monitoring, border processes and procedures, access to asylum procedures, return policies and the solidarity-based distribution of immigrants," said the Vice-President of the European Commission.
Another relevant aspect of this document is that the 27 member countries of the European club will have a new accelerated border procedure to return illegal immigrants who do not meet the requirements to apply for asylum to their countries of origin. Before these changes, the removal process used to take several years.
Thanks to the pact, these asylum claims will be processed within a maximum of 12 weeks and when people are rejected they will be returned to their respective countries of origin in less than three months.
"EU countries could also apply the fast-track procedure to people picked up at sea, caught while trying to enter illegally or applying for asylum at a country's border, rather than in advance," according to the pact document.
Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, speaks of the need for mechanisms to speed up the removal of illegal persons who refuse to cooperate with the respective authorities by withholding essential information, and who do not meet asylum requirements, so that they can be expelled more quickly.
Last year, almost 200,000 migrants arrived on the Italian coast, which is the main gateway to Europe. In three days alone, during the months of September, Italy received 10,000 people from overseas.
Meloni points to a migration crisis that threatens to overwhelm health and care services: reception centres have an average capacity to accommodate 400 people, so the Italian authorities have had to resort to using hotels for temporary accommodation.
They arrive in Lampedusa from Tunisia, a distance of 150 kilometres by sea. Prime Minister Meloni declared a state of emergency in the face of migratory pressure and has shown an interest in curbing departures in the countries of origin themselves through synergies with the expelling countries.
According to Frontex data, 56,852 irregular immigrants arrived in Spain, with the Canary Islands being the main point of arrival by sea due to their location in the Atlantic, off the northwest coast of Africa. These are mainly people leaving Senegal, Morocco, Gambia and Guinea, many of whom are unaccompanied minors.
For the Spanish President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, this agreement reached by consensus in the EU will allow the European migration and asylum system to be revised, which will help to speed up the processes.
While 27,000 people arrived in Greece last year. In response to its own domestic needs, on 19 December, the Greek parliament approved an amendment tabled by the conservative government to grant residence and work permits to 30,000 irregular migrants on the grounds of "a huge labour shortage", especially in the Greek countryside. Parliament voted on legislation that allows people to work legally in Greece after at least three years' residence in the country (instead of seven) and no criminal record.
The bloc as a whole wants to curb the massive influx of illegal immigrants and on this point everyone is in agreement. There are already those who foresee that if the new pact does not curb them, the impatience of several European countries could undermine the capacity of the new agreement under the temptation of self-regulation and stricter rules. We will have to give it a chance.