Discussions have progressed well between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU on the establishment of a joint Roadmap on the texts of the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, with both sides expected to “formalise in September” their commitment to adopt all the texts of the Pact before the end of the legislature, says the Czech Presidency of the EU Council.
Launched in February under the French Presidency of the EU Council at the request of the President of the European Parliament, President Roberta Metsola, who was relaying a request from the political groups, the Roadmap involves all the rotating Presidencies of the EU Council until the end of 2024, namely the Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain and Belgium.
It also assumes that the Parliament and the Council of the EU will have to rapidly adopt all their mandates on the different texts of the Pact, the objective set by this Roadmap as seen by EUROPE being to conclude all negotiations before “February 2024”.
The EU Council recently adopted its mandate on the ‘Migrant Screening’ and ‘Eurodac’ regulations, but has yet to make progress on the ‘Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (AMMR or ‘ex-Dublin’)’, ‘Asylum Procedures at the Border’ and the ‘Migration Management in Case of Crisis and Force Majeure’ regulation.
In the Parliament, the objective would therefore be to have mandates on these 5 texts by December 2022 or January 2023 at the latest, including the regulation on asylum and migration management, which is the 'locomotive' text of the Pact in that it organises the modalities of solidarity and defines the criteria organising the responsibilities of the Member States in terms of asylum.
The Swedish rapporteur, Tomas Tobé (EPP), was still considering at the beginning of the year to put the text to a vote in July in the Committee on Civil Liberties, but the timetable was too ambitious.
In any case, the draft Roadmap signals the commitment of the different parties to start all negotiations in trilogue by the end of 2022. The parties should also, in principle, meet at least twice during each rotating presidency to take stock of the various issues and try to resolve any difficulties.
According to one source, however, there is still a divergence between the Parliament and the EU Council on the method of adoption of the texts, with the Parliament opting for a package approach and formal adoption at the end of the negotiations, rather than a gradual implementation of each text as it is approved, as stipulated in the EU Council’s step-by-step approach.
The Roadmap also covers the issues inherited from the former ‘Asylum Package’ of 2016, with both parties also committing to implement them. Several conclusive trilogues took place during the previous legislature, such as the one on the directive revising the conditions of reception of asylum seekers, but could not be implemented due to the lack of a solution on other issues, such as the former ‘Dublin’ regulation, which has since been replaced by the AMMR. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)