Members of the EU Council’s Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum (SCIFA) discussed on Monday 27 September whether to move forward on the text of the ‘Asylum and Migration Pact’ on pre-screening of migrants at external borders by cutting the existing links with the regulation on asylum procedures, in particular with regard to the ‘fiction of non-entry’.
At the discussion, which was intended to feed into the EU Interior Ministers’ debate in Luxembourg on 8 October, the experts were also expected to debate the progress of the EU’s return policy, as the Commission is due to appoint a returns coordinator to work with the new head of returns at Frontex.
On 8 October, the Interior Ministers will not take any legislative decision on the so-called ‘screening’ regulation, proposed for September 2020, but the Slovenian Presidency of the EU Council wants to sound them out on a possible decoupling of the dossier from the regulation on asylum procedures.
Both texts include elements related to screening and the problems posed by the fiction of non-entry, a principle which allows a person arriving in the EU to be considered as not yet on EU territory until authorised to do so, and which may be accompanied by measures of deprivation of liberty for migrants or alternatives to detention.
For the Slovenian Presidency, it says in a note of 22 September, the question of alternatives to detention arises more with the regulation on asylum procedures rather than the one on screening, which provides for controls not exceeding 5 days.
Slovenia therefore considers that the ‘screening’ regulation, which does not prejudge the outcome of a case dealt with in the context of an asylum procedure at the border, can be considered as a tool exclusively dedicated to the security of the external borders and, therefore, be decoupled, on this fictional aspect of non-entry, from the text on asylum procedures.
“Therefore, the Presidency believes that the adoption of the screening regulation would bring added value to the protection of the external borders, even if it is dissociated from the other proposals of the Pact”, in particular to “prevent illegal immigration”.
As for returns, it expected to discuss how this new returns coordinator should work with other entities, including Frontex. Slovenia also wants to ask them to what extent the States agree with the European Court of Auditors’ finding that readmission arrangements with third countries work better when they are more flexible (see EUROPE 12789/4).
Meeting in Luxembourg
EU Interior Ministers will meet in Luxembourg on 8 October. They will discuss the challenges of screening and detention at the external borders, before having a progress report on the situation in Afghanistan. The day before, the Member States will have been invited to the forum on the resettlement of Afghan refugees.
The external dimension of migration will also be discussed, including the progress made by the Commission in its partnerships with target countries. The ministers will consider the plans of several countries, including Iraq, which is experiencing difficulties with Iraqi migrants arriving in the EU via Belarus.
In a plan dated 20 September, the Commission notes that Iraq “has responded constructively to EU requests for cooperation to help resolve the situation at the EU-Belarus border, where the majority of irregular migrants are of Iraqi origin. The EU welcomes the fact that Iraq has temporarily suspended all commercial flights between Baghdad and Minsk and is working with the Lithuanian authorities to identify Iraqi nationals”.
But the Commission recalls that Iraq generally struggles to take back its irregular nationals.
Link to the ‘screening’ note: https://bit.ly/3lWa2lC
Link to ‘return policy’ note: https://bit.ly/3zJknX5
Link to the provisional agenda of the Justice and Home Affairs Council: https://bit.ly/3ANGzR9
Link to the Iraq plan: https://bit.ly/2WgPcol (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)