« With this Migration and asylum pact, The European Union is implementing a project of great migrations from third-World countries to the supposedly rich EU, a project of migratory submersion of European nations. » Marine Le Pen, president of the Rassemblement National (RN), France.
On September 9, in the Greek island of Lesbos, the camp of Moria was burning. Around 10 000 migrants surviving there before going on with their trip to Europe, were left without a home. Two weeks after this tragic event, Ursula Van Der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced the European migration political reform, called the New pact on migration and asylum.
This new system was supposed to replace the Dublin III regulation, applicable since 2013. According to that rule, every migrant coming to Europe should seek asylum in the first European country he set foot in. The Dublin III regulation was considered as dysfunctional by both the frontline countries, such as Greece and Italy, where refugees first arrive and human rights organizations. In 2015, in the peak of the arrivals, 1 320 000 persons sought asylum in the continent. In 2019, there were 720 000.
In that context, Marine Le Pen, at the head of the French far right party Le Rassemblement National (RN) declared : « With that Migration and asylum pact, The European Union implements a project of great migrations from third-World countries to the supposedly rich EU, a project of migratory submersion of European nations. »
If we analysed the content of that pact, it seems that this claim is false.
Indeed, the new pact is based on a screening system of asylum seekers centralized on the external borders of the European Union. Until now, migrants apply for asylum in the countries they wanted. If their application was rejected, many of them tried their luck in another European country.
The new pact suggests that screening should be done before the migrants enter Europe, in order that those who are not qualified for asylum do not enter the territory. It provides that in a period of 5 days, by a procedure made up of identity control, fingerprinting and registration in the European database, people will be classified in three categories: first, those with a normal asylum procedure, who can apply in a member state; second, those who come from countries with low recognition rates for international protection, whose cases will be examined in an accelerated procedure at the border; and finally, those who should be deported directly. It means the deportation system will be made directly at the borders of the EU. Thus, if the system works as it has been conceived, there will be many fewer migrants crossing the borders than now.
Moreover, the pact aims at organizing better the return policy for migrants whose asylum demand has been dismissed. First, for countries who refuse to welcome migrants, other forms of « solidarity » are proposed. «Possibilities for solidarity through relocation are widened and complemented by return sponsorship ‘schemes » , say the new pact. Basically, the member states commits either to organize the return of people or to contribute to « to capacity building for asylum, reception capacity, operational support or engagement with relevant non-EU countries of origin or transit. » It means that return policy would be for now included into the asylum and migration system and coordinated in a European scale, between the member states.
Furthermore, a last component of that return policy will be the partnership with the non-EU countries of origin or transit. According to the French refugee rights organization La Cimade, the pact is designed to make non-EU countries participate to avoid departures to Europe and to collaborate to return and readmission policy.
Conclusion
To conclude, the New migration pact is not « a project of great migrations from third world countries to the supposedly rich EU. » Actually it is precisely the contrary, as it aims at reinforce the control of European borders, standardise the criteria of admission, make sure migrants who do not fulfil these criteria do not enter the territory and that those who have managed to do so despite everything can be deported quickly to third countries.
