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Europe is a nerve centre for migrants seeking better opportunities or to access greater protections for asylum seekers, the majority of them coming from Africa or the Middle East. With the EU countries facing challenges like an ageing population, eventually leading to a decline in the workforce population. So, the migration of skilled workers is very important to sustain and boost the economy.
Illustration by The Geostrata
For years, Europe has embraced refugees and asylum seekers from all over the world partly to sustain the narrative of ‘political correctness’ and out of a belief that free education, health and financial security would build a composite society.
But irregular migration brings along a whole lot of problems like housing crisis, illegal migrations and crime rate. This led to a drastic shift in people's attitude towards the irregular migration.
Across the European nations, there is a rise in protests against irregular migration, which shows discontent among people for the immigration policies in Europe. These are backed by the far-right political parties which has created a deep divide in European politics.
Conservative leaders throughout Europe have gained massive public support due to politically unacceptable levels of immigration.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Conservative Party came to power in subsequent elections, preceded by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government collapse due to a disagreement between the coalition partners regarding restraining immigration.
On May 14, 2024, the European Parliament adopted the New Pact on Migration and Asylum with 322 MEPs voting in favour of it (mostly MEPs of centre, centre-left and centre-right parties) and 266 MEPs voting against it (mostly those of further left and further right parties). This agreement aims to address the challenges faced by skilled immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.
The pact comprises a set of five regulations. The first one is the Screening regulation for systemizing control at the external borders of the EU. It specifies procedures for the verification and security checks of the people intercepted at the border crossing for outlawed entry.
After the verification and as well as health and safety risk tests, the asylum seekers may be referred for further procedures or can be deported to their country of origin. The second regulation known as the EURODAC is a database system which is expected to help the member nations in better monitoring of the movements of the asylum applicants within the European Union. The database is enriched with fingerprints as well as biometric data. These two regulations were approved unanimously by all the member nations.
The Regulation on Asylum and Migration Management clarifies the conditions for the transfer of an applicant from one member state to another.
It includes clear obligations for the applicant to remain in the designated member state. It also specifies a fixed timeline for the member states to process an application. The updated system will provide nations not located near an EU border with two choices. First, they have the option to accept a portion of the 30,000 applicants or, they can voluntarily contribute a minimum of 20,000 euros for each asylum applicant to an EU fund.
The Common Asylum Procedure Regulation will introduce mandatory border procedures for simplifying the asylum process and to protect the rights of the applicants.
Response to migration crisis and force majeure situations provides the member states with the authority to introduce exceptions to certain rules in case of crisis situations such as mass arrivals.
France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy have shown full support to the agreement while Hungary has been opposing taking in refugees or paying for the asylum applicants.
The agreement received a lot of backlash from human rights organizations like Amnesty International and the International Rescue Committee pointing out that the pact will lead to ill-treatment of the refugees and not provide any adequate solutions for them.
The EU needs migrants for its economy to grow, but at the same time, the EU is facing an economic burden of refugees arriving on the borders daily. If there is no middle ground among the member nations, the new pact will not be able to address or solve the generic problems of the asylum seekers or the residents of the host nation.
BY BHAKTI
TEAM GEOSTRATA
Important analysis