The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties will debate, on the 1 September, the impact assessment carried out by the European Parliamentary Research Service on the new Pact on Migration and Asylum presented by the Commission in September of 2020 (see EUROPE 12566/1).
The various rapporteurs on the texts of the Pact (asylum and migration management regulation, asylum procedure regulation, screening regulation, solidarity mechanisms in case of crisis and force majeure regulation, Eurodac regulation) will present their work starting 30 September. They will adopt, in principle on the same day, their position on the proposal for a regulation on Eurodac, the biometric database of asylum seekers.
They had asked for this analysis before tackling their draft reports. But the study, carried out between April and July, was generally negative, with the Research Service pointing to a number of omissions and shortcomings on the part of the Commission and finding its solutions generally ineffective.
The impact assessment, seen by EUROPE, points first of all to logical problems in the design of the Pact. In its view, the Commission does not always base its proposals on sufficiently clear evidence, which is more an anticipation than a response to solid facts and data. The general objectives of the Pact are also not well defined and often “clear criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of EU action are lacking”, the study adds.
“In particular, there is no clear justification for combining the objective of achieving a fairer and effective system to strengthen migrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights with that of accelerating asylum procedures. There is also no adequate justification as to how the latter (acceleration) objective relates to the specific (human rights) challenges encountered by migrants and asylum seekers.
The Research Service also says that the various texts presented do not address the current challenges of uneven implementation of EU asylum rules across Member States.
While the legal basis for the proposals of the main regulations seems to be largely adequate, it is less appropriate for the proposed regulation on the screening of migrants at external borders. The legal fiction of the principle of ‘non-entry’ into the EU (people who arrive are not immediately considered to be on EU soil) is also problematic. The lack of adequate justification for this principle raises fears of “excessive use of detention” of migrants, the study argues.
On the asylum and migration management regulation, tabled by Sweden’s Tomas Tobé (EPP) (see EUROPE 12682/2), the study also considers that the proposed new ‘Dublin’ criteria (extension of the family unit, opening up to holders of diplomas obtained in the EU) could further increase the burden on the so-called countries of first entry.
Weak solidarity mechanism
The parliamentary service also notes negatively the solidarity mechanism presented by the Commission and regrets that mandatory solidarity is only activated in certain cases. The fact that the Commission does not propose new legal migration routes as well means that migrants will still be dependent on irregular entry routes.
In general, the European Parliamentary Research Service questions the effectiveness of the measures presented by the Commission as well as their “coherence and proportionality”.
“The measures proposed do not solve the problem of national reception systems that are subject to disproportionate pressure” and the European added value of the proposed solutions with regard to solidarity and responsibility sharing remains questionable, the study concludes. In addition, the proposed screening and asylum processing procedures, including the border procedure, will further degrade the protection of migrants, it says.
The European Parliament rapporteurs, who have been meeting in a contact group since the beginning of the year, had commissioned this alternative impact assessment because the Commission had not provided one.
However, on Friday 27 August, a parliamentary source involved in the negotiations on one of the Pact’s legislative texts described the alternative impact assessment as particularly “pessimistic”.
Link to the study: https://bit.ly/3zpLgjk (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)