Refugee & Migration Policy

Just days after Taliban violently seized control of Afghanistan, the Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarakis, has warned of a repeat of the situation in 2015 and announced that Greece will not be the “gateway to Europe for illegal Afghan migrants”.

This short sentence is all you need to understand why the German government committed an error of judgment concerning Afghanistan. An error of judgment that kills people every day – and democracy throughout the world as well, by the way.

As part of the examination of the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum proposed by the European Commission, the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Paris office publishes a series of analyses devoted to this subject. This second article examines the progress of the debates on the Pact at European level, considering in particular the external dimension of migration and asylum policies and the relationship with third countries, as well as the legal routes of entry of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants into the EU.

This article outlines the main features of the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, and describes the context in which the proposal has been drafted. Some of the initial critical comments made by different stakeholders will be further highlighted, to draw some preliminary conclusions.

In contrast to many declarations that Italy should not be left to face the challenges of mass boat arrivals from North Africa alone, the New Pact's proposals if anything renew the obsolete “Dublin system”.

In Czechia, debates about the EU's New Pact focus only on border protection, return and detention, rather than discussing more relevant proposals on legal migration, integration and inclusion.

In mid-September 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke out strongly in favour of a human and humane approach to the common EU Asylum Policy. Her lofty promises did not, however, survive very long.

On 23 September, the European Commission tabled the “New Pact on Migration and Asylum”. An interview with MEP and migration policy spokesperson of the Greens/EFA group at the European Parliament, Erik Marquardt, on the future of European asylum and migration.

Unless conditions in poor countries improve drastically, their citizens will continue to seek a better future elsewhere, even under the pretext of requiring international protection.

The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum intends to sustain EU-Turkey partnership with same old political incentives rather than new responsibility-sharing mechanisms. The Pact will thus promote securitisation in the Mediterranean without generating meaningful change.