The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

An Overview

Abstract

Less than a month before the approaching European elections, the Council managed to adopt the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum on May 14, 2024, which has been published by now in the Official Journal of the European Union. The Pact was not only meant to put a provisional end to the most controverse, decade long, fierce debate at the European political level, but also to deliver and calm down the even more heated public discourses at the Member States’ level in view of election day. The Pact is meant to “establis[h] a set of rules that will help to manage arrivals in an orderly way, create efficient and uniform procedures and ensure fair burden sharing between member states” (European Council, 2024). It is nothing less than an entire reform of the EU’s asylum and migration system that will become effective in 2026. Some familiar pillars remain but are amended (Eurodac Regulation; Asylum Reception Conditions Directive), while others are also transformed in their legal character (Asylum Procedure Regulation, Qualification Regulation). Additionally, some regulations are newly introduced (Management Regulation; Resettlement Framework Regulation; Return Border Procedure Regulation; Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation; Screening Regulation). This article is neither a legal nor a political evaluation of the Pact. It therefore refrains from referring to publications in this respect – especially as most of them do still not relate to the final texts of the legal instruments now put into force. Instead, it gives an overview of genesis (2.), structure (3.) and key elements (4.) of the new framework to foster guidance for an initial understanding and accessibility to the ongoing legal and political controversy – now based on a new legal framework in status of implementation.