The European Commission published, on 9 August, its implementing decision on the ‘adequate capacity’ of Member States to implement, starting in 2026, the new border procedure provided for in the Asylum Procedures Regulation.
This ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ regulation, which was definitively approved by the EU Council in May and came into force in June, assigns Member States a certain number of compulsory places in facilities in order to achieve the target of 30,000 border procedures per year at EU level (rising to 120,000 if they are repeated several times).
This decision logically assigns higher figures to countries that are more likely to have irregular external border crossings, i.e. Italy, Hungary, Spain and Greece, followed by Poland, Croatia and Bulgaria.
The adequate capacity is calculated on the basis of the number of irregular crossings provided by the Frontex agency, which also includes arrivals following search and rescue operations and refusals of entry at the external border (the calculation is based on Eurostat data over a three-year period, from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023).
In this table, the adequate capacity of Italy, Hungary (which does not support the Pact), Spain and Greece is set at 8,016, 7,716, 3,301 and 2,188 respectively. The Decision also sets the maximum number of applications that a Member State is required to examine each year under the border procedure. The figures for these first four countries are 24,048, 23,148, 9,903 and 6,564 respectively.
As a reminder, the new border procedure is a fast-track procedure for asylum seekers who have crossed borders irregularly and are of a nationality whose positive asylum response rate is less than 20%. It therefore applies to migrants with little chance of obtaining international protection in the EU.
Support for the implementation of the Pact
On the 1 August, the Commission also announced in a press release that it would be providing “tailor-made support and expert advice to nine Member States” to help them prepare national plans for implementing the Pact’, due in early December 2024.
Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Romania have submitted applications and will receive support until the end of November 2024.
The aim will be to help them assess their needs in terms of personnel (staffing and training), infrastructure and information technology, as well as the costs involved and the procurement procedures that need to be launched, so that the Member States can prepare their plans in good time, the press release states.
Link to the enforcement order: https://aeur.eu/f/d7o (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)