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EU lawmakers on Thursday gave the green light to a central plank of the EU’s flagship migration package, the latest sign of progress on long-stalled reforms.
The measure endorses new rules seeking to speed up the return of migrants who entered Europe without permission and to prevent these migrants from traveling to other countries within the EU.
And it strikes a middle ground on the contentious question of whether countries will be required to take in asylum seekers from fellow EU members — a step EU border countries traditionally favor but others often oppose. The approved text only foresees such “mandatory relocations” in emergency situations, which Brussels would determine, with all other relocations being voluntary.
“This is the most important shift to make sure that we can come to an agreement with member states,” said MEP Tomas Tobé, one of the lawmakers leading on the legislation for the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), referencing the final compromise.
The vote reflects Parliament’s gradual rightward shift on migration — a move that mirrors the progression of EU countries but cuts against EU lawmakers’ more left-leaning record on the issue. The shift comes amid a spike in both legal and illegal migration across Europe, with unauthorized border crossings in 2022 reaching levels not seen since 2016 — the peak of the EU’s last migration crisis.
“Parliament has until recently had a much more liberal line than the Council,” said one senior EU diplomat, referencing the Council of the EU, which represents individual governments in Brussels. “That is still the fact, but [recent votes from Parliament indicate] that there is a stricter line also in the Parliament which may make it more possible to arrive at a common position.”
Indeed, Thursday’s migration pact sign-off comes on the heels of two recent votes that displayed the Parliament’s increasingly strict line on migration.
On Wednesday, MEPs backed the use of EU funds to support border protection, a controversial move as it inches Brussels closer to directly funding the once-loathed border walls. Lawmakers even came close to passing a separate amendment explicitly calling for the EU to finance border fences. That text narrowly failed despite the support of nearly three-quarters of lawmakers from the EPP group, Parliament’s largest.
And on Thursday, Parliament’s three most powerful groups — the EPP, the center-left Socialists and Democrats, and the centrists with Renew — all voted in favor of the border migration pact. The package also got the support of Italian far-right MEPs aligned with the country’s anti-immigration prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
The rest of the Parliament’s right wing, including the European Conservatives and Reformists, and Identity and Democracy, opposed the package.
Next, Parliament will move to negotiations with the Council. These talks are expected to begin after EU justice and home affairs ministers settle on a common position during their meeting on June 8 and 9, according to a spokesperson from the Swedish EU presidency, which holds the rotating leadership of the Council.
The text approved Thursday foresees a more stringent registration system in order to speed up the return of migrants.
Tighter screening, it says, “could help discourage secondary movements in the Schengen area” Europe’s borderless, visa-free travel zone.
And it calls on countries to voluntarily set their own quotas on how many migrants they would be willing to take in. In emergency situations, however, the EU could order countries to accept asylum seekers.
The text defines an emergency as the “mass and sudden arrivals of third-country nationals,” and it grants the European Commission, the EU’s executive, the power to trigger the crisis mechanism.
EU countries may push back on this part of the text.
Spanish S&D MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar told reporters that “some governments do not want to talk about” mandatory relocations.
“I am well aware that at the end of the day, there will be some compromise that I will not like,” he added.
