The EU agrees to new rules on hosting migrants and seeks to cut numbers. Early on Wednesday, the European Union agreed on new regulations to limit the number of immigrants entering the country and more fairly allocate the costs and labor of hosting them.
During the subsequent all-night negotiations on EU legislation, the European Parliament and EU governments’ representatives agreed on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which is set to go into force next year.
The regulations address various topics, including screening undocumented immigrants upon their arrival in the EU, administering asylum claims, allocating responsibility for processing applications among EU member states, and crisis management strategies.
More than half of the migrants entering the European Union in November crossed the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy or Malta. Although they have significantly decreased from the high of over a million in 2015, they have gradually increased from a 2020 low of 255,000.
Previous attempts to distribute the burden of hosting migrants have failed because members of the EU, particularly those in the east, were hesitant to accept refugees who had landed in Greece, Italy, and other nations.
Countries not near the border will now have to decide whether to contribute to an EU fund or receive refugees under the new arrangement.
The proposed screening mechanism aims to differentiate those requiring international protection from those who do not.
Individuals whose claims for asylum are unlikely to be granted, such as those from Tunisia, Turkey, India, or Tunisia, may be stopped from entering the EU and held at the border, as well as those thought to pose a security risk.
According to refugee rights groups, it will establish what essentially equates to prison camps at the frontiers of the EU.
