Three years in negotiation, the European Commission's Pact on Migration and Asylum is a complex package of reforms intended to mark “a fresh start” for EU asylum and migration policy, but how does it measure up?
On April 10th 2024, after lengthy negotiations and despite concerns from NGOs about the final agreement, including the International Rescue Committee, the European Parliament adopted the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum (Pact). The Pact presents a complex package of ten legislative files intended to reform the EU’s migration and asylum system by establishing “a European solution” to migration challenges. This was intended to prioritise “more secure European borders”, “faster and more efficient procedures for asylum and return” and “more solidarity with Member States at external borders”.
However, in reality, the final Pact agreement has left troubling cracks in the foundations of the EU’s new migration and asylum system. It is unlikely to ease the pressure on the states of first entry, and may well result in even greater human rights violations at Europe’s borders. We are likely to see a further rollback of people’s right to seek asylum, more detention at borders including for families with children, even fewer opportunities for people to have their asylum applications processed fully and fairly, increased pushbacks, and more attempts to “outsource” asylum processing by shifting the EU’s responsibilities onto countries who already host the largest numbers of refugees.
As the Pact is put into action, the IRC is calling for guarantees from EU leaders that it will safeguard – rather than erode—fundamental rights and protections for people seeking safety.
While the new regulations introduced by the Pact entered into force in June 2024, these will only be applied in 2026 after a two-year transition period, apart from one important element—the Union Resettlement Framework—which is applicable immediately.
The Pact’s implementation phase has begun with the introduction of the Common Implementation Plan by the Commission. This is a roadmap to putting the 10 legislative files of the Pact into action, laying out vital steps that must be taken by the EU and its member states before June 2026. It will require capacity, financial and infrastructural investments, along with revision of member states’ national asylum and migration laws and policies. Each state is now expected to introduce their national implementation plan by December 2024.
In the future, if any member state were to fail to meet the rules and regulations set out in the Pact it could face legal actions and infringement procedures.
In 2023, over 117 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide:
UNHCR expects that more than 130 million people will be displaced by the end of 2024—the devastating result of armed conflict and political turmoil, which is often exacerbated by climate change. However, the vast majority of people forced from their homes remain in their own region, and just a tiny fraction seek to reach protection in Europe. Still, EU states have consistently failed to reach an agreement on how to deal with people seeking safety on its territory—resulting in increased political polarisation, states diverging from EU and international law, and immense suffering and human rights violations at Europe’s borders.
With humanitarian and protection needs at record highs, it has never been so important for the EU to raise the bar and forge a safe, orderly and humane approach to asylum and migration.
Learn more in our latest report.
The Pact is comprised of ten legislative files. These are intended to work as a system, rather than a ‘menu’ that member states can pick and choose from:
Click below to expand more information on each topic.
Rather than seeking to deter people from reaching Europe at all costs, the EU and its member states should focus on upholding individual’s’ fundamental rights and dignity. This will require urgent investment to ensure that all EU states meet their legal obligations – including upholding the right to asylum, and ensuring everyone has access to a fair and full asylum procedure. The EU and its member states must comply with human rights standards and procedural safeguards—these include ensuring all asylum seekers have access to information about their rights and opportunities, free legal aid, the right to appeal and guarantees that their case is moving forward, adequate reception conditions, and the ability to seek family reunification.
The new screening and border procedure risks further systematising detention for people seeking asylum in the EU, including for children. It not only violates international law to detain people seeking asylum when there are other alternatives, but the IRC’s experience of working in Greece shows that being held for lengthy periods in detention facilities or closed camps has a disastrous effect on people’s mental health. It severely impacts people’s quality of life, well-being and dignity, and their prospects for long-term integration. Detention is never in the best interest of a child, whatever their age, and must be prohibited. The focus should be ondeveloping alternatives—such as community-based accommodation solutions and open reception centres—instead of enforcement and coercion.
The Crisis Regulation allows for states to diverge from obligations set out in the Pact in cases of "crisis, instrumentalization and force majeure". However, these terms are not clearly defined and open up a wide scope for interpretation. This approach could make derogations from existing asylum law the norm rather than the exception, leading to more rather than less disorder at Europe’s borders. EU states should avoid lowering any asylum and border standards and lengthening the duration of procedures. The crisis and force majeure measures must be truly exceptional, evidence-based and not over-used.
All EU member states must abandon any measures or policies leading to pushbacks or collective expulsions. They should establish fully independent and effective human rights border monitoring mechanisms, involving NGO and civil society actors. The national authorities must ensure that any allegations of violation of fundamental rights at borders, including as a result of pushbacks, are properly investigated and perpetrators held to account. They must also coordinate and resource search and rescue missions at sea, while ensuring that survivors are disembarked in a place of safety and not returned to places where their lives may be in danger.
The EU and its member states should expand safe pathways so people are not forced onto dangerous routes in search of protection. While different safe pathways, such as education and work visas, need to be scaled up and expanded, this cannot be at the expense of the right to seek asylum – no matter the mode of arrival. The EU and its member states should also tackle the root causes of forced displacement, rather than introduce migration deals that "outsource" border and migration management to third countries and result in hardened border controls and denial of access to fair asylum procedures.
The EU and member states must immediately put the Union Resettlement Framework (URF) into practice. The URF is a golden opportunity to strengthen EU states’ resettlement frameworks and processes, commit to more ambitious resettlement pledges in line with the EU and its member states’ true capacity to welcome, better monitor and report on how well they are meeting these commitments, and involve displaced people and civil society in the design of resettlement programmes. The URF should be urgently put into action. As envisaged by the URF, the European Commission should not delay in convening their planned High-level Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Committee which will be responsible for EU-level coordination, and ensure that civil society is involved.
Dignified reception conditions must be ensured across the EU, with a focus on specific needs and vulnerabilities, including access to healthcare and education for children. EU states should avoid housing displaced people in remote, prison-like detention centres and instead expand community-based accommodation solutions. Refugees must be supported in accessing labour markets without discrimination, including by ensuring the recognition and transferability of their education and skills, as well as through information provision, upskilling and training. Following the mid-term review of the EU Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion in 2024, the EU and member states should define key actions and allocate resources to address identified inclusion and integration barriers across the housing, education, employment and healthcare sectors.
All states should establish fundamental rights monitoring mechanisms to ensure that the rights of asylum seekers are not being violated. These should, at a minimum, be present throughout the screening and border asylum procedures as foreseen in the Pact, but EU states should consider expanding its scope. In order to be truly independent and efficient, these mechanisms should involve NGOs and civil society actors from the outset, and have clear consequences for member states who do not set up these mechanisms, fail to cooperate with them, or ignore their findings.
These groups’ expertise should inform the process of planning the Pact’s implementation over the next two years, and reporting on its progress. The EU and its member states should engage with refugee-led and refugee-rights' organisations throughout this process, to ensure refugees’ perspectives and needs are at the centre of policy and decision-making processes. They should work with local organisations that represent and specifically focus on the most vulnerable groups and individuals, for example those that are led by and work with women, to promote greater inclusion.
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IRC news and articles related to refugee resettlement in the EU.
Understand the different tools designed to support people seeking protection in Europe including resettlement, complementary pathways, and family reunification.
More on the IRC's work in Europe shaping policies to help people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.
