- The pact is a legacy of the 2015 migration crisis when EU countries saw more than 1 million people claim asylum after arriving, mainly by boat, to European countries.
- Front-line European countries, including Greece and Italy, were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, prompting anti-migrant violence and a backlash from far-right political parties.
- Authorities there were struggling to provide the bare minimum of aid and failing to provide legal protection or process asylum claims.
- But to critics of the pact, the reforms will institutionalize inequality, instrumentalize migration crises and ignore the actual holes in migration governance.
Stalling reform
- Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland refused to participate, and in 2020 the EU Court of Justice found they had broken EU law.
- Nevertheless, the quota system was never scaled up, leaving front-line states to continue to process much of Europe’s refugee population.
- Since 2016, the European Commission has proposed multiple reforms, but negotiations stalled because of opposition from far-right governments in Eastern Europe.
- Previously, the database included only fingerprints – not images or biographic details – of people above the age of 14.
- The pact also makes it easier for police to access the database.
- Together, these other four directives work to make it harder for people to make asylum claims in the EU.
- They claim that the reforms also undermine the right of appeal – sometimes deporting people before an appeals decision is finalized – and expand detention.
Leveraging migration flows
- Biden’s executive order paralleled President Donald Trump’s earlier transit and entry bans, arguing that asylum seekers must apply in the first safe country they transit.
- The EU reforms also parallel recent proposals from Biden to shut down the border during migration surges.
- There is growing academic literature on “migration diplomacy” and “refugee blackmail” that documents how states leverage migration flows as a tool in their foreign policy.
- Critics argue that this commodifies refugees – literally putting a price tag on individual lives – while undermining solidarity.
‘Fortress Europe’
The need for EU migration reform was made clear by the 2015 crisis faced by front-line European countries. But rather than address the real problems of low state capacity, processing times, human rights protections, or conditions in detention centers, I believe the pact will reinforce the concept of “Fortress Europe” by investing in deterrence and deportation, not human rights.
Nicholas R. Micinski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
