Blog series: EU New Pact on Migration and Asylum
Introductory blog
By Lynn Hillary
Credits: By EmDee - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Dear reader of Human Rights Here,
In September 2020, the European Commission unveiled the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, a series of long-awaited measures to reform the EU migration regime. On November 23rd the Migration & Borders Working Group of the NNHRR gathered with migration scholars of Tilburg University to discuss several aspects of the EU New Pact.
The pact aims to ‘rebuild trust between Member States and to restore citizens' confidence in our capacity to manage migration as a Union.’ Commission President von der Leyen also stressed that ‘[i]t is now time to rise to the challenge to manage migration jointly, with the right balance between solidarity and responsibility.’
The goal of our workshop was to have several speakers discuss their take on elements of the pact, thereby giving a broad overview of the proposals. We found that our exchange of thoughts led us to get a first grasp of the innovations of the pact and the migration policy of the European Union, as well as its continuity with previous policy documents and legislative proposals. This resulted in several knowledge clips and this blog series.
The first blog post by Mariana Gkliati concerns the New Pact’s provisions on returns and the role of Frontex. Secondly, Annick Pijnenburg and I discuss the human rights implications of the externalization aspects of the pact and the proposals on third country cooperation. In the third blog post of this series, Conny Rijken looks into the far-reaching proposals on the external border procedure and pre-entry screening at the external borders. Fourthly, Tihomir Sabchev (co-coordinator of the Migration & Borders Working Group) looks into the legal pathways recommended in the New Pact, in particular resettlement, humanitarian admission and complementary pathways. Fifthly, Mariangela Veikou discusses the pact’s solidarity measures through the looking glass of racism. The sixth and last blog post of this series, by Amy Weatherburn, concerns labor migration with a focus on the integration of low-skilled migrant workers into the labor market and human trafficking in Europe.
We hope you will enjoy the series, which will be posted during January and February 2021.
Lynn Hillary, Coordinator of the Migration & Borders Working Group of the NNHRR
Bio
Lynn Hillary is a PhD Candidate at the Open University of the Netherlands. Her PhD research concerns the principle of mutual trust and external European asylum law.