On Friday, 13 November, the Ministers of Home Affairs of the Member States of the European Union discussed the architecture of the Pact on Migration and Asylum presented on 23 September and took note of the elements of consensus identified by the German EU Council Presidency in recent weeks.
The Presidency would like to reach a political agreement on the broad lines of the Pact before the end of the year, but German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned, on Friday, that the 4 December EU Council may not take place on that date due to an agenda linked to the “important” Ecofin Council, as it is connected to the implementation of the Recovery Plan and the multiannual budget. “So, we will have to find another date” in December to see how to move forward with discussions on the pact, he said.
In the meantime, the Presidency remains committed to getting the Member States to agree on key aspects such as the external dimension, the strengthening of the return policy and partnerships with non-Member State, but also on mandatory solidarity in times of crisis or migratory pressure, with ‘flexible’ responses ranging from the relocation of asylum seekers to aid for returns. It is also a question of supporting the principle of the new procedures for checks at the external border (the Regulation on preliminary controls).
While the latest discussions have shown that there is a broad consensus on the foreign policy aspects, where things have “progressed well”, as one diplomat summed up, a number of countries are more sceptical about the concrete modalities of solidarity and the functioning of new procedures such as preliminary controls or border procedures.
Other countries, including Hungary and Poland, are even more negative, according to this source, but are not part of the blockade.
In any case, the discussion paper submitted to the Ministers, as seen by EUROPE, remains general. After a final exchange between national ambassadors to the EU on 6 November, some additions had been made to address certain concerns.
On mandatory solidarity, the text now insists on the “guarantee of effectiveness” which must be given to countries under pressure, while questions are raised about flexible solidarity and the feasibility of returns within 4 or 8 months.
“The mechanism must be able to provide for meaningful and tailor-made measures of solidarity, combining flexibility with a guarantee of effectiveness for Member States under pressure. Solidarity provisions should allow for a reduction of the pressure on the benefitting Member States”, underlines the text.
On the external dimension, the text now mentions the migration routes of the Atlantic, and not only the Mediterranean, in order to take into account the situation in the Canary Islands
On the external dimension, the text also states that without improved cooperation with non-Member States on returns through readmission agreements, for example, the European asylum and return system “cannot function”. The Commission must therefore resume discussions on the current agreements and initiate new ones.
The meeting of national ambassadors to the EU on 6 November showed, as summarised in the text, that “whilst there was a large agreement on certain parts of the paper, notably on the external dimension, return and external border management”, agreement on other parts - such as the solidarity mechanism and the envisaged pre-entry phase - requires further political discussion and clarification also on the practical impact of these different concepts.
The S&D Group deplores an overly restrictive approach
“The EU Council is focusing too much on new restrictive measures while turning its back on vulnerable people seeking protection”, said German MEP Birgit Sippel (S&D) in a statement.
“Each application must be examined individually, as it is simply not possible to say at first sight whether a person's application should be accepted or not”, said the MEP, referring to this regulation on preliminary controls, on which she will be the main rapporteur.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar, Chair of the Committee on Civil Liberties and rapporteur on the Crisis and Force Majeure Management Instrument, believes that “to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the new pact must make relocation the first and most important act of solidarity that Member States adopt”.
Link to the document: https://bit.ly/3kp1ZuR (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)