After the European Parliament’s research service and the European Parliament’s thematic department for constitutional affairs and citizens’ rights (see EUROPE 12782/6), it is now the turn of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) to severely criticise the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, presented in September 2020 by the Commission.
Their representatives set out their position on 2 September in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties,and the view of the CoR and its rapporteur, German MEP Antje Grotheer, was widely critical of the excessive importance of the first entry criterion in the analysis of asylum applications, a criterion on which Member States “waste too much time”, as well as the failure to take account of the realities of the regions, particularly those on the front line of migration. Some things in the Pact also go “against the principle of subsidiarity”.
The EESC finds it regrettable that the Pact “devotes most of its proposals to the management of external borders and return, without paying due attention to regular channels of immigration, safe pathways for asylum or the inclusion and integration of third country nationals”.
The EESC’s rapporteur, the Spaniard José Antonio Moreno Diaz, also expressed his “serious concerns” about the pre-screening regulation for migrants at external borders. “The filtering system does not provide sufficient procedural safeguards for the respect of fundamental rights by the persons accessing it. As it stands, it puts increased pressure on countries to make a quick decision and therefore does not give due consideration to individual rights”.
Mr Moreno Diaz also fears the externalisation of European policy. While the EESC “welcomes initiatives to improve shared responsibility and governance of migration flows with third countries”, it “is concerned about the use of cooperation mechanisms that could lead to the outsourcing of migration management by the EU”.
The system of solidarity between Member States as envisaged by the Commission, with relocations and return sponsorships and annual plans for annual returns, also appears insufficient.
Link to the CoR opinion: https://bit.ly/3jISZUm
Link to the EESC opinion: https://bit.ly/3yCkhjD (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)