The European Union agreed on new rules for accepting migrants

On Wednesday, the European Union agreed on new rules for accepting migrants. They will allow more even distribution of asylum seekers across Europe and possibly reduce the number of those whose applications will be accepted. Human rights organizations express concern that this will lead to an even greater deterioration of the situation of migrants.

According to the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, the EU countries will have a single database on migrants, in which all new arrivals will be entered. The Eurodac database, which includes biometric and other personal data, will be used to weed out those to whom Europe has previously refused asylum.

The new procedure offers two possible ways of considering the case of migrants: to the usual way of considering asylum seekers, an accelerated one, no more than 12 weeks, is added, during which migrants will be resettled not in the countries of the request, but in reception points on their borders. Thus, the EU hopes to screen out those who may pose a threat to national security, and those who come from countries considered safe for the majority of their inhabitants – for example, India, Pakistan and Morocco.

Within the framework of the pact, the concept of “mandatory solidarity” is introduced. It means the obligation of European countries to either accept a certain number of migrants, or to pay fees for everyone whom they refuse to accept, and to finance the common European process of processing their applications.

The agreement also provides for the possibility of tightening reception procedures in the event of a mass influx of refugees.

The new pact was approved by many representatives of the EU, including the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mark Rutte, and the representatives of Sweden and France in the European Parliament. President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola called the pact “historic”, but mentioned that it is not an ideal, but a compromise solution. “This is not a ready-made solution to all complex problems, but it demonstrates that Europe has solutions and is ready to implement them,” Metsola said.

At the same time, many human rights organizations have sharply criticized the pact. According to Amnesty International, establishing an asylum procedure in Europe “will increase the suffering of migrants and refugees at every step of their journey.”

The European director of AI, Eva Heddy, said that with the new rules, “even more people will actually be imprisoned at the borders of the EU”, and European countries, instead of jointly solving migration problems, will now be able to “simply pay off”. The European Council for Refugees (ECRE), which includes 117 non-governmental organizations, named the day of the adoption of the pact is a “black day for Europe”, and the document itself is “Byzantine in its confusion and Orban’s in its cruelty.” According to ECRE, the pact denies migrants the right to protection and allows them to be treated inhumanely.

• According to the UN Refugee Agency, more than 153,000 asylum seekers arrived in Europe in 2023 from the Mediterranean Sea alone – mainly from African and Middle Eastern countries.