The new EU pact on asylum and migration is further to the right than the far right

European First.It could be summarized like this the agreement on asylum and migration reached on 20 December after all-night negotiations between representatives of national governments, the European Parliament and the European Commission.

After years of clashes and fractures, the European Union is consolidating, strengthening the walls of his fortress, erecting walls, elevating migrant people for a moment to a role that is difficult to maintain and then letting them fall.In the middle of the sea.

We have been waiting for the reform of the European asylum and migration system for some time.There has been talk for years about the reform of the Dublin Regulation and, in particular, its key principle:that the country of entry be responsible for all asylum procedures even if those arriving do not intend to stay in the country where they arrive.There was great anticipation for this pact on asylum and migration because it will define the direction of EU migration policies for many years to come.

Europe was at a crossroads:move forward with policies of deterrence and exclusion or lead by example, designing safe migration routes and safeguarding the rights of refugees and asylum seekers in a spirit of global humanitarian leadership.Europe has chosen the first path and there is not much to be surprised about.

The right to asylum was already 'dead' in the EU in 2017:when the commission, against ECHR, embraced the shortcut created by the Gentiloni / Minniti government, providing 💰 and Made in Italy lookouts to criminals passed off as Libyan coast guards.Why should we ever be surprised by today's 'pact'.

— Sergio Scandura (@scandura) December 20, 2023

He does it in spite of what he had declared just a week ago the High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, according to which "Refugees are the symptom of our collective failure to guarantee peace and security".It does so with a slap in the face following the latest tragic shipwreck, which occurred this week off the coast of Libya, causing the death of over 60 people.It does so with a slap in the face of history and the memory of the Lampedusa shipwrecks of ten years ago.By portraying as an act of responsibility a choice that fundamentally removes responsibility and makes migrants meat to be politically capitalized.

“Refugees are a symptom of our collective failure”

On the other hand, last July our Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, He said that “deterrence is the most extraordinary form of diplomacy”, and this is the logic pursued by the EU pact:discourage departures by tightening reception rules, making assessment procedures more hasty upon first arrival, by offloading, if possible, controls and places to detain migrants to third countries.It's the model Italy-Albania.It is the basis of Meloni-von der Leyen memorandum with Tunisia which becomes a system.Which is also so good Not working.

The agreement sets rules on how to share the costs and responsibilities of receiving asylum seekers across the EU bloc, limit the number of people arriving and make it easier to expel those whose requests are not accepted.The final text is expected to be agreed before European Parliament elections in June, and follows years of failed attempts to overhaul asylum rules.

The president of Parliament, Roberta Metsola, called the agreement "historic", adding that, while not perfect, it allows for "a balance between solidarity and responsibility" and is "far better for all of us than the previous system".The President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared that with this pact "Europeans will decide who arrives and who can stay in the EU, not human traffickers".

The Italian Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, hailed the agreement as a "great success" for Europe and Italy, because in this way the EU border countries most exposed to migration "will no longer feel alone".Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, without mincing words, is not of the same opinion he said that his country “strongly rejects this pact on migrants.We will not let anyone in against our will."

It is “a dark day for the EU” which marks “the death of the individual right to asylum in Europe” and “the most significant attack on asylum and migration rights since the foundation of the EU”, commented the Left group in the European Parliament.The agreement represents “the most drastic tightening of European laws on the right to asylum”:it is “a dream come true for right-wing populists.”

Today is a dramatic day for the rights of people seeking protection in Europe:a dream of the right-wing populists in the EU coming true.In the negotiations on the #MigrationPact, the European Parliament has become the doormat of the Member States. pic.twitter.com/RhWOA7XpPn

— Cornelia Ernst (@ErnstCornelia) December 20, 2023

Under the pretext of stopping the wind of the far right, Europe has decided to pursue right-wing policies, comment an editorial by Financial Times.The pact on asylum and migrants arrived in the same days in which French President Emmanuel Macron approved a bill that makes the recognition of asylum applications more difficult, speeds up expulsion procedures and introduces among the criteria for assigning housing and subsidies not the need, but the degree of "Frenchness".Macron succeeded where not even Marine Le Pen hoped.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in July he rented the ship Bibby Stockholm, a prison vessel rented by the British government to detain asylum seekers who arrive irregularly in the country, waiting for their asylum application to be examined.And just a month ago, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom declared it illegal the British government's plan to forcibly send asylum seekers to Rwanda while their applications were assessed.

In October, Italy, together with twelve other European states, he reintroduced border controls with Slovenia and Austria, invoking an article of the Schengen Code which provides for the possibility, in exceptional cases, of restoring document control at internal borders.

The pact on migrants was born in this context: cruelty to power, in the name of power, which passes off humanitarian crises as invasions by hordes of migrants and sacrifices and sells off processes (such as Schengen) and rights (such as international protection) achieved with difficulty after the Second World War for an electoral calculation.

How the agreement of 20 December was reached

The agreement reached on December 20th is the last act of a journey started three years ago, in September 2020, with the aim of breaking the stalemate between member states on the reform of the EU's asylum and migration policies.

It is a package of political proposals and recommendations on border management, procedures for recognizing the right to asylum, and the reception and integration system for migrant people which comes in a very complicated political and social context.

At the end of September 2023, in the world they were 114 million people forced to abandon their land due to the climate crisis, the difficult economic situation and armed conflicts.The vast majority remain in their region.Currently, 76% of the world's refugees are hosted by low- or middle-income countries, many of which are unable to adequately meet their needs.Even in these countries an anti-migrant sentiment is gradually taking hold.In Tunisia, people from other countries on the African continent were defined as "parasites" and pushed into the Libyan desert.At the beginning of October the Pakistani government he has declared that all undocumented Afghan citizens would have to leave the country within weeks due to perceived threats to national security.The order affected more than 1 million Afghans in Pakistan, many of whom are fleeing after the Taliban returns to power in 2021.

In Europe, around half a million people applied for asylum in the EU in the first half of 2023, according to Eurostat data, 28% more than in the same period in 2022.On average, around 40% of asylum applications are successful.However, we are a long way from the peak of 2015, when more than a million people, most of them fleeing wars in Syria or Iraq, arrived in Europe showing all the cracks of the European Union reception system, the so-called Dublin Regulation. 

Being Migrants:wars, disinformation, the European dream

Since then, migration management has created strong fractures between the 27 member states:on the one hand there are coastal countries, such as Greece and Italy, the first landing point for migrants;on the other, the internal countries of central and northern Europe - in particular the states belonging to the so-called Visegrad bloc - not willing to welcome more people.

In the meantime, the consensus and influence of the parties that have made the defense of the borders from the so-called threat of migrants a political banner and a question of national identity have grown throughout the European Union, which has gradually moved more and more towards right.

On December 19, as mentioned, the French Parliament approved the new immigration law.In Germany, the governing majority is committed to keeping growing anti-migrant sentiments fueled by right-wing parties under control.Some regional governments they even asked for it to be removed the possibility of requesting the right to asylum, a right enshrined in the country's laws and international treaties.Even more traditional parties have called for action to limit asylum requests.In Sweden and in Netherlands, the last elections saw the growth of the wave of far-right parties.

What does the pact on asylum and migration provide?

The agreement of 20 December arrived in this political and social context and is affected by the context in which it was born.

The new European pact does not resolve the migrant crisis and endangers the right to asylum

The new package introduces few changes compared to the existing regulation, but more stringent and repressive.Essentially, an agreement was found to strengthen European borders through walls, fences and barbed wire, to finance detention facilities and border controls in third countries, on model of Italy with Albania.

There are five areas of intervention:the methods of screening of migrants upon their arrival in the EU, the procedures for handling asylum applications, the rules for determining which Member State should be responsible for processing applications, what to do in the event of a “crisis” at the EU's external border and how to ensure safe arrival for some refugees in Europe.

Specifically, the first landing states will carry out one screening of all arrivals, through the use of biometric systems (facial images and fingerprints will be taken) and health and security checks, for a maximum of seven days.However, the specific needs of children will be "taken into consideration" and each member state will have an independent monitoring mechanism to ensure respect for fundamental rights.

As for the assessment of asylum requests, the pact provides a common procedure across the EU for granting and withdrawing international protection, replacing different national procedures.The processing of asylum requests should be faster (up to six months for a first decision), with shorter time limits for manifestly unfounded or inadmissible requests and at EU borders:Persons considered to be at security risks or whose asylum claims are deemed likely to be unacceptable - including women and children - may be held in border detention centers and risk expedited expulsion.It remains to be understood, however, how situations that generally require months, if not years, of evaluation can be assessed.

In particular, the expulsion measures will limit the possibility of requesting asylum for those arriving from countries considered "safe", based on a European directive of 2013, and will speed up their transfer to third countries from which they most often depart to reach Europe, such as Tunisia, Libya and Turkey.Italy considers "safe" Albania, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Nigeria, Senegal, Serbia and Tunisia, points out an article by Wired.

The relocation mechanism will only be activated in exceptional circumstances, leaving something that instead required systemic intervention as an emergency.Internal EU states will be able to choose whether to accept a certain number of refugees - based on the size of their GDP and population and the number of irregular border crossings - or pay money into a common EU fund.The fund will contribute to the expenses of all member countries, not just the host countries.

Criticism from human rights organizations

“The EU migration pact can be seen as the last attempt to maintain the right to international protection, enshrined after the Second World War, but it leaves too many questions unresolved,” commented to the New York Times Hanne Beirens, director of the Migration Policy Institute Europe, a think tank based in Brussels.

The agreement does not make clear whether it will preserve the right to seek asylum, is vague on how it will speed up border procedures, how it will review asylum requests, how it will determine whether a person should be expelled and how those who do not qualify will be repatriated. kindergarten, continues Beirens.

Fifty human rights organizations are highly critical.Under the new agreement, he claims the Platform for Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), any person arriving in Europe “risks being detained in border facilities, without exception:from newborns to children, adolescents and adults."

Amnesty International he has declared that the rules will lead to “a surge of suffering”, weakening the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and others, worsening existing legislation and failing to address the real problems.

In essence, Amnesty continues, if definitively approved the new agreement will lead to a greater number of people detained at European borders, a greater number of asylum seekers subjected to "substandard procedures", limited support to EU border states and measures emergency situations that limit asylum that instead become the norm.

Instead of prioritizing solidarity through relocations and strengthening protection systems, said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty's EU office, states "may simply pay to strengthen external borders, or finance countries beyond outside the EU to prevent people from reaching Europe.”

The new agreement violates the rights of minors, Save the Children adds.The changes introduced put children on the move in danger and separate migrant families.The lawmakers' priority was clearly to "close borders, not to protect people, including families and children who are fleeing violence, conflict, hunger and death by seeking protection in Europe", commented the director of Save the Children for Europe, Willy Bergogné.

“The EU has missed the opportunity for an agreement that would finally define the rules of solidarity between member states and the sharing of reception responsibilities,” says Oxfam.“Instead, [EU countries] agreed to increased detention, including of children and families in prison-like centres.They have slammed the door in the faces of those seeking asylum.This agreement is a dangerous dismantling of key principles of human rights and refugee law."

Image via euronews.com