The Slovenian Presidency of the EU Council intends to make progress on the new Eurodac regulation, which modifies the database of asylum seekers, and on 15 September proposed to Member States that all references to other texts from the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, which is also under revision, be removed.
This choice, according to a document revealed by Statewatch, would allow partial progress to be made on the elements of the regulation that are not impacted by the various texts under negotiation.
“The main objective of these new amendments is to dissociate the draft regulation from the other Pact proposals that are being negotiated. This will allow for further negotiations and possibly the adoption of the regulation. Therefore, references to other proposals in the Pact have been replaced by references to existing legislation and newly proposed concepts under consideration (such as the creation of a separate category of persons disembarked as a result of search and rescue operations at sea or the principle of screening migrants upon arrival at external borders) have been deleted”, explains the Presidency.
At the same time, it adds provisions for access to Eurodac by authorities responsible for verifying travel authorisations to the EU (for persons not requiring visas) such as those created by the ETIAS system. This would allow them to check that these travellers have not had previous asylum claims refused.
In the European Parliament, the political groups are still divided a few weeks before the vote in the Committee on Civil Liberties. Like the Greens/EFA, the S&D group does not want Eurodac to be adopted until the impact of the other texts is known.
The S&D group also does not want the new Eurodac to “further stigmatise irregular migrants who flee or have to be sent back”, the office of Portuguese shadow rapporteur Isabel Santos told EUROPE last week.
Link to the document: https://bit.ly/3tTe565 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)