Meeting at a press conference on Wednesday 10 June, the eight rapporteurs who shaped the architecture of the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ in the European Parliament set out their respective expectations regarding implementation of the text, scheduled for this Friday.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar (S&D, Spanish), Matjaž Nemec (S&D, Slovenian), Birgit Sippel (S&D, German), Fabienne Keller (Renew Europe, French), Lena Düpont (EPP, German), Tomas Tobé (EPP, Swedish), Alessandro Ciriani (ECR, Italian) and Jorge Buxadé Villalba (PfE, Spanish) thus placed implementation of Eurodac and mandatory screening at the top of their priorities, insisting that the 12 June deadline is not an end point, but the beginning of “rigorous democratic scrutiny” of the measures introduced at national level.
While the European Commission and the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU have sought in recent weeks to be optimistic about the progress already achieved in the Member States (see EUROPE 13878/2), Ms Sippel began her remarks by stressing that “nearly no Member State is ready to 100%”. A situation deemed “even more disappointing” because European asylum legislation “did not start at zero”.
Expulsions and human rights. For her part, Ms Düpont returned to the notion of solidarity and the sharing of responsibility among Member States, hammering home that the mandatory counterpart of such a system is legal firmness and the systematic expulsion of rejected migrants.
By contrast, Mr Nemec refused to allow the Pact to become a mere return tool, demanding that European solidarity be genuinely applied on the ground in order to guarantee “decent reception”. A concern also raised by Ms Keller, who reiterated her indignation at plans by several Member States to negotiate with third countries in order to establish ‘return centres’ there (see EUROPE 13881/3). In her view, the provisional agreement on the ‘Returns’ regulation lacks human guarantees: “The Pact is tough and effective. The returns regulation is neither, it is just fast”, she said bluntly.
Hungarian reluctance. The paradox of this press conference was that, although he was the lead rapporteur on the ‘Eurodac’ strand, Mr Buxadé explicitly backed Hungary in its refusal to comply with the rules of the Pact. The Spanish MEP believes the mechanism has in fact been “torpedoed” by the migration policy of his own country, describing the Sánchez government’s decision to carry out a mass regularisation of undocumented migrants as “fraud against European legislation”. This attack provoked Ms Sippel’s anger, and she described the comparison as “ridiculous”, recalling that granting papers “falls within national sovereignty” and does not amount to free movement at European level.
Given the lack of cooperation from certain Member States, Mr López Aguilar for his part called on the Commission to assume its role as guardian of the Treaties by bringing legal proceedings against those refusing to comply. “It is essential that all Member States are compelled and bound by the same obligations”, he argued. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)