Asylum pact goes live next week, testing EU’s bid to calm the far-right

In September 2020, the European Commission presented its pact on asylum, spanning nine regulations and a directive after a decade of political turmoil that saw EU states turn against each other over migration.

The laws were finally adopted on 12 June, 2024. Margaritis Schinas, who was then vice-president of the commission, said that deals with other countries are needed to ensure that its new internal management rules can work.

“We can sideline the extreme right,” he had also previously insisted.

Two years have since passed and the EU’s credibility is now on the line as EU-wide adopted asylum laws launch next week, on Friday (12 June). Multi-billion euro cash for migrants deals have been hammered out, including with Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Mauritania.

Promises to curb irregular migration, accelerate deportations, and turn away asylum seekers by sending them abroad, while reasserting control over the EU’s external borders are among the headline measures aimed at reassuring a public the commission believes is increasingly swayed by the far-right.

It is a losing battle and one where the EU’s appeasement with the hard-right risks backfiring when the reforms fail to deliver as promised.

Courting the Taliban aside, the cracks on such appeasement are already appearing ahead of the French national elections next year.

“In reality, the pact will not be accepted by Europeans,” according to Fabrice Leggeri, a far-right French MEP and former head of the EU’s border agency Frontex, who is facing a crimes against humanity probe, speaking earlier this week.

The far-right has already successfully framed migration as a national security threat in views often echoed by more moderate political forces, including the new left-leaning government in Denmark.

Earlier this week, the rightwing forces helped force through a deportation bill that could usher in migrant busting tactics reminiscent of the US paramilitary force ICE.

Fearing the deals with other countries fail to deliver, the far-right are now suggesting the commission streamline the new asylum rules as part of another so-called omnibus, a term in EU parlance typically associated with efforts to reduce administrative burdens and cut red tape.

A possible interpretation of this is a further carving out of asylum rights and oversight, potentially limiting judicial scrutiny in order to bypass judges and constraints imposed by independent courts.

Indeed, Magnus Brunner, the EU’s home affairs commissioner, called Leggeri’s omnibus proposal “an interesting idea” and noted that the new asylum rules would be evaluated next year — in a move that appears to signal the opening salvo for even further restrictions.

Brunner also insisted that they are doing everything to ensure the respect for fundamental rights. “You don’t probably believe me,” he said, in comments that suggest he knows the EU is already suffering from a credibility problem.