EU agrees on asylum reform

The asylum system in the EU is being fundamentally reformed. EU states and the European Parliament finally agreed on the relevant legal texts. The aim is to curb irregular migration into the EU.

The EU Parliament and EU member states have reached an agreement on a comprehensive reform of the EU’s asylum and migration policy. This was announced by EU Migration Commissioner Margaritis Schinas.

The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said on X, formerly Twitter: “The EU has agreed on a landmark agreement to regulate migration and asylum.”

With the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the European Union wants to draw the lessons from 2015 and 2016, when more than a million people came to Germany alone, after years of dispute.

Stricter asylum rules and faster deportations

The reform essentially provides for stricter asylum rules, asylum procedures at the external borders and a mandatory solidarity mechanism between member states in order to relieve the burden on main arrival countries such as Italy or Greece.

A central element is that arriving asylum seekers with little chance of staying should be deported more quickly and directly from the EU’s external border. Behind this are the so-called border procedures.

If people have a nationality whose acceptance rate for asylum is less than 20 percent, they should be detained at the border. Your claim to asylum should then be examined directly on site and within twelve weeks in an expedited procedure. Anyone who has no prospect of asylum should be deported immediately.

The crisis regulation regulates how EU states act in the event of a particularly strong increase in migration. For example, arrivals may then be held at the border for longer under prison-like conditions. Germany had long rejected this due to humanitarian concerns.

A so-called solidarity mechanism is intended to help overburdened states on the external border with admission programs or compensation payments. The reform does not change the principle that the EU state in which the asylum seeker has arrived is responsible (Dublin rules).

Criticism of “massive tightening”

The agreement was “the most massive tightening of European asylum and migration law since the founding of the EU,” said EU MP Cornelia Ernst after the long negotiations.

The left-wing politician said the individual right to asylum is de facto dead. “In the future, asylum seekers will be detained at the border, and this should also be possible for families with children of all ages,” explained Ernst.