The contentious EU migration pact, designed to centralise and streamline asylum policy across member states, got its final stamp of approval in Brussels on Tuesday, as ministers from across Europe voted to approve all ten legislative components of the pact—despite abstentions by Ireland, Czechia, and Denmark.
While the Pact had cleared a tense session of the European Parliament in April, conservative MEPs pointed out that it would merely enshrine open border policies and punish member states for non-compliance.
The Migration Pact has been in the works since 2015, having been formally proposed by notoriously left-leaning Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson in late 2020. Back in March, Sweden Democrats MEP Charlie Weimers explained the thinking behind the Pact in the following terms:
The left and Ylva Johansson will lose their power in the EU elections on June 9th. The establishment is aware of this. That’s why Brussels is attempting to push through this fig leaf.
As expected, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia led the way in objecting to the Pact, with Polish finance minister Andrzej Domański declaring prior to Tuesday’s vote that elements of the legislation negotiated by the now-departed PiS government could not be supported by Warsaw’s new progressive rulers.
Some aspects of the Pact, including updates to Eurodac, a common EU asylum database, have been welcomed even by the populist right. However, the Pact’s solidarity mechanism—requiring member states to accept defined GDP-related quota of refugees or pay a €20,000 fine per migrant refused—has been fiercely resisted by right-wing parties across Europe.
Both Ireland and Denmark decided not to cast a vote on the Pact, while Denmark advocated a nuanced left-wing approach to migration and policy as proposed by the country’s social democratic government last week at a meeting of EU and NGO officials in Copenhagen.
Czechia’s abstention on voting to accept the Pact is partly motivated by a shift toward the right in the country’s previously Europhile opposition, led by former prime minister and opposition leader Andrej Babiš. Meanwhile Ireland’s political elite grapples with a rising tide of anti-migration agitation, made worse by an asylum dispute with the UK over PM Rishi Sunak’s struggling Rwanda Plan.
Following today’s vote, the European Commission will now follow up the Pact by presenting an implementation plan in June, with member states obliged to formulate their own national strategies by January of next year.
Eurocrats have already warned that dissenting member states could face legal consequences for opposing the Pact in what could propel the EU’s ‘rule of law’ saga into the next legislative term. Even Poland’s Europhile Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he would oppose the relocation of asylum seekers onto his territory.
The passing of the Migration Pact is directly tied to attempts by Brussels and mainstream parties to subdue a rise of right-wing populism expected in next month’s European elections, with liberal MEPs expressing fears that this legislative term was their final opportunity to dictate the terms of the EU’s migration policy before populists gained more power.
