On Wednesday 22 June Member States’ national ambassadors to the EU are expected to approve two general approaches on the ‘Migrant Screening’ and ‘Eurodac’ regulations, in line with the political green light given by EU interior ministers on 10 June in Luxembourg to these two texts of the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ (see EUROPE 12969/1).
On 27 June, an ad hoc meeting of the Solidarity Platform will examine the ‘solidarity’ aspect of this political agreement, in particular by defining the quantified commitments of the Member States regarding the voluntary relocation of people rescued at sea, the French Presidency of the EU Council having assumed an annual estimate of 10 000 people to be relocated.
In the meantime, the Member States will be called upon on 22 June to validate the final adjustments made by the Presidency to these two legislative texts presented in September 2020 in the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’.
Screening of migrants - The latest text, dated 15 June, spells out the main points of compromise reached during the negotiations, which the ambassadors will therefore be asked to confirm.
The regulation will apply to three categories of third-country nationals: those who are apprehended when crossing the external border without authorisation, those who are disembarked as a result of a rescue at sea (‘SAR’) operation and those who seek international protection at external border crossing points or transit zones without fulfilling the entry conditions.
“Some flexibility will be left to national authorities as to the measures taken to ensure that persons remain at the disposal of the competent authorities in order to prevent absconding and to define the status of persons subject to control”, whether that be detention or alternative measures.
For the duration of the external border control only, people “should remain at the disposal of the authorities and should not be allowed to enter the territory of the Member States”, the compromise states.
Member States will also have flexibility as to where this procedure would apply. At the technical level, the French Presidency of the EU Council also deleted references to other Pact texts still under discussion, such as the regulation on asylum and migration management, to focus solely on existing obligations.
In addition, clarifications were made, such as the fact that “obligations under the Regulation should be without prejudice to applicable provisions under Union law on international protection or return procedures. It should also be without prejudice to Member States’ obligations under international law regarding search and rescue operations”.
Member States will still have “the possibility, in exceptional circumstances linked to the number of third-country nationals arriving at the borders, to allow the health control obligation to be waived by the control authorities, under the supervision of qualified medical personnel, while obliging Member States to inform the Commission when they make use of this possibility”.
Eurodac - With regard to the regulation revising the Eurodac asylum seekers database, which will become a large information database also covering return decisions, the category of persons disembarked as a result of search and rescue operations has been reintroduced while also allowing a longer period for the transmission of data for this category of persons in the event of a sudden influx.
In the context of this sudden influx, Member States would have an additional 48 hours, compared to the initial 72 hours, to transmit the registration data to the central Eurodac system.
A new category of beneficiaries of temporary protection has been included, but this change will not apply to people displaced by the war in Ukraine, as their registration is now managed by the platform designed by the Commission.
Links to the latest texts: https://aeur.eu/f/27k ; https://aeur.eu/f/27j (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)