The EU on Wednesday agreed to an overhaul of its asylum laws that includes more border detention centres and speedier deportations, prompting migrant charities to slam the changes as "dangerous" and "cruel".
EU governments, officials and MEPs hailed the preliminary accord on the bloc's new pact on asylum and migration as "historic", saying it updated procedures to handle growing irregular arrivals while maintaining respect of human rights.
The legislative reform, reached after lengthy negotiations between EU member countries and EU lawmakers, has yet to be formally adopted by the European Council and European Parliament.
That is expected to be done before June 2024, when EU elections will decide the next parliament. Nationalist parties with anti-immigrant stances are forecast to win more seats in the parliament, reflecting a harder stance among EU voters struggling with a high cost of living.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the agreement on "a fair and pragmatic approach to managing migration".
Many EU countries, including France, Germany and the Netherlands also hailed the accord.
Italy's interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, called the agreed reform a "great success", saying frontline countries like his own "no longer feel alone".
But Hungary -- which objects to having to take in irregular migrants or pay countries that do -- rejected the deal in the "strongest possible terms," its foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said.
The EU reform includes faster vetting of irregular arrivals, creating border detention centres, accelerated deportation for rejected asylum applicants and a solidarity mechanism to take pressure off southern countries experiencing big inflows.
The overhaul, based on a commission proposal put forward three years ago, keeps the existing principle under which the first EU country an asylum-seeker enters is responsible for their case.
But to help countries experiencing a high number of arrivals -- as is the case with Mediterranean countries Italy, Greece and Malta -- a compulsory solidarity mechanism would be set up.
That would mean a certain number of migrant relocations to other EU countries, or countries that refuse to take in migrants would provide a financial or material contribution to those that do -- something Budapest is fiercely against.
- Charities' criticism -
The reform also accelerates the filtering and vetting of asylum-seekers so those deemed ineligible can be quickly sent back to their home country or country of transit.
That procedure -- which requires border detention centres being set up -- would apply to irregular migrants coming from countries whose nationals' asylum requests are rejected in more than 80 percent of cases.
Families with young children would have adequate conditions, human rights monitoring would take place and free legal advice provided, MEPs said.
Another point is a proposed "surge response" under which protections for asylum-seekers could be curtailed in times of significant inflows, as happened in 2015-2016 when more than two million asylum-seekers arrived in the EU, many from war-torn Syria.
Dozens of charities that help migrants -- including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Caritas and Save the Children -- have criticised the changes, saying in an open letter during the negotiations that the package would create a "cruel system" that is unworkable.
Reacting to Wednesday's agreement, Oxfam said the new package of laws is "in many ways... far worse" than the existing system.
"It is a dangerous dismantling of the key principles of human rights and refugee law," Oxfam migration expert Stephanie Pope said.
- Rising arrivals -
Caritas said "rushed asylum procedures with restricted safeguards and appeals, lack of access to legal and medical support and appropriate care for vulnerable groups are likely to happen" as a result.
Amnesty International said that "its likely outcome is a surge in suffering on every step of a person's journey to seek asylum in the EU".
The EU is seeing a rising number of irregular migrant arrivals and asylum requests.
In the first 11 months of this year, the EU border agency Frontex has registered more than 355,000 irregular border crossings into the bloc, an increase of 17 percent.
The number of asylum-seekers this year could top one million, according to the EU Agency for Asylum.
How the EU is reshaping its asylum system
The EU reached a landmark preliminary agreement on Wednesday to reform its laws on asylum-seekers and irregular migrants.
Here are the main changes, agreed after lengthy negotiations between EU member countries and the European Parliament that still must be formally adopted:
- Border filtering -
The new EU Asylum and Migration Pact will see migrants irregularly entering the EU undergo identity, health and security checks, and have biometric readings of their faces and fingerprints recorded, which can take up to seven days.
Children will get special treatment, and member countries are to have independent monitoring mechanisms in place to ensure rights are upheld.
The procedure aims to determine which migrants should receive an accelerated or normal asylum application process, and which ones should be sent back to their country of origin or transit.
- Streamlined vetting -
Asylum-seekers with lower chances of receiving protection status -- defined as those coming from countries whose nationals' asylum applications are, on average, rejected in at least 80 percent of cases -- will be processed faster. Nationals from countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Bangladesh figure in that category.
Their streamlined applications would be processed in centres not far from the EU's "external borders" -- meaning mostly land frontiers and ports, but also airports -- so they could be quickly sent back if their request is judged to be unfounded or inadmissible.
This would require using detention centres, though alternative measures can be used, such as confinement in residences. Up to 30,000 people can be held in the centres at any period, with the EU expecting up to 120,000 migrants annually to pass through them.
Until migrants complete the vetting procedure, they will not be deemed to have entered the European Union.
- Solidarity mechanism -
The new system would reform the EU's so-called Dublin III mechanism under which, generally, the country in which an irregular migrant first steps foot is responsible for handling their case.
Currently that places stress on Italy, Greece and Malta, which have received the bulk of land and sea arrivals in recent years.
Under the new rules, an EU country which has given a university degree or diploma to an asylum-seeker would take over their dossier.
And a mandatory solidarity mechanism would force all member states take in a certain number of asylum-seekers arriving in the outer-rim countries.
If they choose not to, they could provide money or other material or personnel contributions to those that do. The level of contribution would be based on population, GDP, and the number of asylum applications the country receives.
At least 30,000 asylum-seekers a year will come under this relocation system, while countries would pay 20,000 euros ($22,000) for each asylum-seeker they decline to accept.
- Surge response -
The package establishes an emergency response in the event of unexpected migration surges -- the same sort of refugee crisis the EU faced in 2015-2016 when more than two million asylum-seekers entered the bloc, many of them from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.
It would require member states to reduce protections for asylum-seekers, making it possible to hold them longer than usually permitted in detention centres on the EU's external borders.
EU members wants to address the "instrumentalisation" of migratory flows by outside countries. Belarus and Russia have been accused of encouraging migrants to cross their borders to destabilise the EU.
- 'Safe third country' -
The concept of a "safe third country" will be allowed when vetting asylum-seekers.
That could mean that an irregular migrant who came to the EU via a country deemed "safe" enough to lodge a request for protection could have their EU application rejected. But for that to be invoked, a "link" has to be established between the asylum-seeker and the transit country.