The national ambassadors to the EU prepared on Wednesday 2 June, without substantive discussion, the meeting of EU Interior Ministers on Tuesday 8 June in Luxembourg, which will have on its agenda the state of play of the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ with the adoption of a progress report.
In principle, the ministers will not discuss the Pact, as the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council has not scheduled a debate on the subject, although it is possible that some delegations will decide otherwise, given the current situation and the European Summit, which will have migration on its agenda.
On 8 June, the ministers will also be briefed on the progress of all asylum and migration-related dossiers since 2016, summarised in a specific note.
According to a latest version of the progress report dated 31 May and submitted to the ambassadors, the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council confirms the blockages on various parts of the Pact and the impossibility of continuing work at technical level on certain regulations, in particular the one on the filtering of migrants at the external borders, which is now a matter of more political arbitration.
On the Asylum Management and Migration Regulation, which organises solidarity in times of pressure and replaces the old text on the Dublin Regulation, there is still no consensus among Member States on the inclusion of siblings in the notion of ‘family’ (to justify the acceptance of an asylum application by a person wishing to join his or her siblings already established in a Member State).
Member States also disagree on the degree of flexibility in the use of solidarity measures (between relocation and return sponsorships in particular), with some Member States wanting to push this flexibility to the maximum while others do not want to deviate from relocation measures. This last option of return sponsorships, which should have taken place within 8 months, still needs to be discussed, the report says, and the modalities of implementation of these tools also need to be clarified.
The Commission’s proposal to create a special solidarity mechanism for search and rescue and disembarkation of persons rescued at sea does not meet with consensus either.
As for the regulation on asylum procedures, there are still many sticking points, between the voluntary or involuntary nature of the use of the border procedure (which allows for accelerated processing), the feasibility of the link between a negative asylum decision and an immediate return decision, and the legal implementation of the concept of ‘non-entry’ into the European territory.
Other texts of the Pact are more mature and ready for adoption, such as the regulation on the European Asylum Agency or Eurodac, but the ‘package’ logic is maintained. On Eurodac, the regulation that will allow better recording of biometric data and the background of asylum seekers, several Member States have criticised the decision not to go any further, considering that they might already need this tool.
Link to the progress report: https://bit.ly/3yWoLTp
Link to the progress of Asylum and Migration files: https://bit.ly/2SNuVov (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)