The EU Council of Interior Ministers that met on Thursday in Luxembourg came to an agreement on key asylum and migration laws.
After a long and difficult negotiation, the Swedish EU presidency announced: "The Council today took a decisive step towards a modernisation of the EU’s rulebook for asylum and migration. It agreed on a negotiating position on the asylum procedure regulation and on the asylum and migration management regulation. This position will form the basis of negotiations by the Council presidency with the European Parliament."
"No member state can deal with the challenges of migration alone. Frontline countries need our solidarity. And all member states must be able to rely on the responsible adherence to the agreed rule. I am very glad that on this basis we agreed on our negotiating position ... To balance the current system whereby a few member states are responsible for the vast majority of asylum applications, a new solidarity mechanism is being proposed that is simple, predictable and workable."
According to the Ministry of Migration: The establishment of a mandatory solidarity mechanism ensures permanent decongestion at the borders and adapts the commitments of the Dublin Regulation to the particular characteristics of frontline countries such as Greece. It also supports the concept of safe third countries. In addition, the agreement establishes an annual political debate, at the ministerial level, which will raise the migration situation and the needs that exist in terms of solidarity, something that Greece has traditionally put forward.
Earlier on Thursday, Italy and Greece demanded last-minute changes to the proposed agreement, pushing for a cut in the number of people each state would take on and laxer rules to send people back to countries outside of the EU.
Under the deal that eventually came together and is to be finalised ahead of a 2024 EU election, each country would be responsible for a set number of people, but would not necessarily have to take them in.
Countries unwilling to receive irregular migrants and refugees arriving ad hoc to the EU would be able to help their hosting peers through cash – around 20,000 euros per person – equipment or personnel.
The agreement would introduce a new expedited border procedure for those deemed unlikely to win asylum to prevent them from lingering inside the bloc for years.
