The new EU migration pact has been coming into force across Europe for two weeks now, bringing greater uncertainty and slowing down already complicated systems, and leaving asylum seekers suspended in a dangerous limbo.
Gaia Neiman
Since the EU pact on migration and asylum came into force on 12 June, its implementation leaves more questions and concerns than results.
The pact, which purported to speed up migrant processing with more aggressive screening, has already stepped up surveillance in many member states – without disincentivising migrants who still embark on the costly journey to Europe.
“The guards are really bad with us. They are blackmailing us for deportation,” said a Syrian asylum seeker, currently detained in a closed reception centre in Bulgaria for at least 18 months.
In the last few weeks, he said a climate of oppression has only intensified. “Frontex came here. They started to take all the people’s fingerprints,” he told Euobserver of the day the pact was implemented.
Officials assured detainees that screening would only mean problems for those that had a criminal record, but the next day, a van came to pick up a fellow detainee.
The pact on migration and asylum was agreed on between EU member states as a uniting measure to crack down on migration in 2024, with the deadline for implementation now two weeks gone.
The European Commission has praised its pact as a major success, despite uneven implementation across member states and mounting concerns.
Its defining features are a costly EU-wide biometric database, strengthened screening procedures for children as young as six, solidarity mechanisms for countries less affected by migration fluxes, and allegedly, faster processing, with €3bn invested by the EU to aid its implementation.
In a climate of tougher border systems, refugees rescued at sea by the NGO SOS humanity reported greater and more normalised violence from the EU-backed Libyan coast guards in keeping migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.
