A third round of discussions ultimately proved insufficient. Meeting on Thursday 21 May for what was meant to be their final trilogue on the recast of the regulation regarding the return of irregular migrants, the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU and the European Parliament failed to find common ground on the arrangements for its entry into application. A new meeting has therefore been scheduled for the 1st of June in the hope of unlocking this last regulatory obstacle.
Mutual recognition and ‘Taliban’ amendment dropped. At this stage, the co-legislators have approved a common line on almost all the provisions, according to our information. The core of the regulation, which includes in particular entry bans of indefinite duration, a tightening of the administrative detention regime and the establishment of return centres or hubs outside the EU, has therefore now been stabilised.
The previous day, at the time of going to press, the lead rapporteur, Malik Azmani (Renew Europe, Dutch), had made a step towards the EU Council by proposing to drop mandatory mutual recognition of return orders and the amendment authorising negotiations with unrecognised governmental entities – until then firmly rejected by the Member States (see EUROPE 13871/18).
The trade-off was flexibility on Article 52, which sets out the implementation timetable for the future regulation. Mr Azmani had thus hoped to bring the EU Council’s position closer to that of the European Parliament, which wanted to set a maximum deadline of six months... but to no avail.
If one sticks to the mandate adopted last December, the EU Council envisages immediate application only for three of the 52 articles in the Regulation. These articles concern the harmonisation of the definitions of return countries (Article 4), the creation of a ‘European return warrant’ and its automated processing (Article 7), as well as the criteria establishing the risk of absconding and the obligations of cooperation (Article 17).
For the rest, the Member States are strictly refusing to go below the 12-month threshold, citing the need to adapt national judicial and prefectural structures.
EPP goes it alone. At the end of Thursday’s meeting, the last obstacle came from the European People’s Party, whose shadow rapporteur, François-Xavier Bellamy (French), was nevertheless at the origin of the European Parliament’s negotiating mandate. The EPP group is maintaining precisely the opposite logic to that of the EU Council: most of the provisions should apply without delay, even if this means possibly postponing a handful of residual measures. Last night, it was the only group still insisting on the six-month deadline, the other groups having ultimately accepted the Member States’ one-year offer.
According to our information, the EPP’s rigidity is causing divisions within the very right-wing and far-right majority that carried the Bellamy report through to the trilogues. The ECR is thus concerned that yet another extension of the discussions will push the formal vote in plenary session beyond the date on which the New Pact on Migration and Asylum enters into force, on 12 June, even though the aim was precisely for the two legislative blocks to apply in parallel.
Despite these delays, Mr Bellamy showed his determination to keep up the pressure on the EU Council. “We stood firm against all those proposing a one- or two-year deadline for implementing this text”, he reacted in a press release, hammering home that “nothing can justify such a delay”.
At the same time, the nature and length of the exchanges are drawing strong criticism from the left. Mélissa Camara (Greens/EFA, French) spoke of a “parody of negotiations”, regretting that “rather than fighting for a dignified and humane text, they prioritised a ridiculous battle over the start date for the text’s application”. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)