The Migration and Asylum Pact is ready to become law. All dossiers in force by June 2026

The concept of accountability mostly relates to the Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR) and increases only those provided for countries of first entry. It will apply automatically in case of risk for security threat – including unaccompanied minors – of “deception of authorities,” or if the migrant comes from a country with a recognition rate of less than 20 percent. Border procedures will provide de facto detention, with no exemptions for families with children under 12, nor legal representation, nor a stay for appeals against most decisions (the exception is for inadmissibility of those based on the concept of “safe third country” and for unaccompanied minors). The “Safe Third Country” concept is crucial to this Regulation, with EU and national lists provided to justify and expedite rapid returns out of the Union, unless there are links between the person and the state from where they come that preclude their safety. New accountability obligations include completing the examination of an asylum application through the border procedure within six months(Apr), but also extending the period of responsibility for handling applications for 20 months and maintaining at 12 months that for search and rescue operations at sea (RAMM). The annual ceiling for border procedures is 30,000 people, based on a formula that takes into account the number of irregular border crossings and the number of expulsions in the previous three years.

What happens when migrant people arrive

Once migrants arrive at the Union’s borders, the Regulation on Screening of the Migration and Asylum Pact will provide a seven-day detention procedure to divide the regular (Ramm) or expedited (Apr) procedures to process their asylum claims. Since the so-called ‘fiction of non-entry’ has remained – that is, that anyone who is screened in a special center will not be considered legally on the territory of the member state and, therefore, of the EU – migrants will de facto be detained as they will have to remain at the disposal of authorities without the possibility of entering national soil. Some guarantees include the possibility for applicants to have access to a copy of the screening form and to preserve the “relevant rules on detention” set out in the 2008 Return Directive (the revision contained in the Migration and Asylum Pact is the only dossier that is certain to fail). But the monitoring mechanism – which does not necessarily include NGOs but can at the discretion of states- does not apply to border surveillance activities (with normalization of racial profiling), and, if the state recognizes a security threat, it will be able to grant national authorities direct access to all data on the person in all databases.

Regarding databases, according to the Eurodac Regulation, all migrants receiving temporary protection as of the age of six will have to accept the collection of their biometric data, even though under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), processing is lawful only if the minor is at least 16 years old. Included in the expansion of data access for national authorities is the collection of photographic data of faces, effectively giving the green light to mass surveillance of migrants arriving on EU soil. Security alerts will be entered into the Eurodac database during the screening process, and border procedures will include a range of new categories – such as irregular border crossing – also through the revision of the Entry and Exit System Review Regulation.

What happens in a crisis

One of the most controversial items in the Migration and Asylum Pact is the Regulation for Crises, Instrumentality and Force Majeure, which deals with times when there is an exceptional or unexpected “mass arrival of people,” including following disembarkation after a search and rescue operation at sea. The Council negotiating position passed, which led to the inclusion of instrumentality (a Regulation that was initially a stand-alone and on which Parliament had not given the green light) in crises and force majeure in cases where “a hostile third country or non-state actor encourages or facilitates the movement of third-country nationals and stateless persons” towards the EU external borders “with the aim of destabilizing the Union or a Member State” by putting “the essential functions of a Member State at risk.” NGOs are excluded from this definition, but only if they can demonstrate that their actions (at sea and otherwise) do not aim to destabilize, with clear risks of repercussions for the criminalization of solidarity.

There are no compulsory relocations of migrants among member countries in crises, but the same three modes of solidarity as in the RAMM Regulation (relocations, financial contributions, or support to third countries) will apply. Instead, some scenarios will trigger derogations to the overall migration and asylum management system: the recognition rate threshold for which people can be admitted to border procedures (under the Apr Regulation at 20 percent) will be 50 percent in force majeure, 60/70 percent in crises, and 100 percent in instrumentality situations. Again, from the border procedures – the duration of which can be extended by an additional six weeks (compared to the nine months in April) – families with children under 12 are not excluded.