Amnesty warns new EU deal on migration and asylum ‘will lead to surge in suffering’ – Europe live | Europe

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has reacted to news that the Colorado supreme court declared Donald Trump ineligible to hold office again under the US constitution’s insurrection clause.

The Party of European Socialists has welcomed the political agreement.

Stefan Löfven, a former Swedish prime minister and now president of PES, said:

The political agreement reached today marks a milestone for the EU. Courageous, constructive, progressive policies offer real solutions, not the divisive politics of the right-wing populists.

I want to congratulate, in particular, Ylva Johansson for her leadership on this very complex file.

The deal represents a solid compromise, it will reform EU migration and asylum policy, into a long-term and sustainable approach, preserving the right of asylum, protecting people, implementing a strong and binding solidarity and responsibility sharing mechanism and effectively managing our borders.

Ashifa Kassam

Oxfam has added its voice to the many rights groups that have criticised the political agreement on the EU’s migration and asylum pact, describing it as a “dangerous dismantling of the key principles of human rights and refugee law.”

In a statement, the organisation’s EU migration expert, Stephanie Pope, added:

What has been agreed is not better – in many ways, it is far worse.

The EU missed the opportunity to finally agree on better responsibility-sharing and solidarity rules. Instead, they agreed on more detention, including of children and families in prison-like centres.

They have also slammed the door on those seeking asylum with substandard procedures, fast-tracked deportation and gambled with people’s lives with increased risks of refoulement.

Ashifa Kassam

Cornelia Ernst, a German lawmaker in the European parliament’s Left group, said “the European parliament has become the doormat of the member states” in the migration pact negotiations.

Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, called today’s political agreement in the EU “a very positive step”.

“Now to its implementation! UNHCR stands ready to advise and support,” he added.

Aurélien Rousseau, France’s health minister, is stepping down over a hardline immigration bill approved by the country’s parliament.

Agnès Firmin Le Bodo is set to serve as interim health minister.

The political agreement reached today on the EU’s migration and asylum pact “will lead to blatant violations of children’s rights, will endanger children on the move, and will lead to further separation of migrant families”, Save the Children said in a statement today.

Willy Bergogné, Save the Children Europe’s director and EU representative, said:

The European leaders involved in these negotiations claim that the new pact is a historic agreement on EU migration policy that will establish clear, fair and faster border procedures. This result is deemed crucial to reducing the influx of asylum seekers towards Europe.

In fact, the agreement reached today is historically bad. It is evident that for the majority of legislators, the priority was to close borders, not protect people, including families and children escaping violence, conflict, hunger and death while seeking protection in Europe.

Ashifa Kassam

The Platform for Undocumented Migrants (Picum) has put out a thread on X with their analysis of what the reforms could mean in practice.

According to the organisation, the impacts of the reform include:

• “Any person coming to Europe will likely be detained in border facilities, no exceptions: from babies to children, teens and adults.”

• “Inside the EU, anyone who looks ‘foreign’ can be stopped and sent to a detention centre for further identification checks.”

• “Member states will be able to derogate from key safeguards when they claim a third country is pushing people to their borders.”

‘Dark day for Europe’, NGO alliance says

Ashifa Kassam

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles, an alliance of 117 NGOs working to protect and advance the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, described today as a “dark day for Europe”.

On social media, the alliance argued that the reforms were based on two “false premises”:

It pointed to several implications, including an increase in the number of people in detention who would be subject to substandard procedures, more pushbacks and the legalisation of various ways to deny asylum.

It added: “Years of work, 1000s of meetings, 100s pages of analysis: the outcomes are still a chilling read.”

Today’s political agreement, reached between the European parliament and the council, covers five laws related to migration and asylum.

Leading political parties and senior European officials have celebrated the agreement as a big achievement. But some members of the European parliament and NGOs have raised concerns.

What does the deal cover?

• As part of the compromise deal, there will be “mandatory solidarity for EU countries recognised as being under migratory pressure” but other member states would be able “to choose between relocating asylum applicants to their territory and making financial contributions,” the European parliament said in its summary of the agreement.

• Another key element of the agreement is that “people who do not fulfil the conditions to enter the EU will be subject to a pre-entry screening procedure, including identification, collecting biometric data, health and security checks, for up to seven days”.

• There will also be a common procedure across the EU to grant protection. “Processing asylum claims should be faster – up to six months for a first decision – with shorter limits for manifestly unfounded or inadmissible claims and at EU borders,” the parliament said.

• The agreement includes new measures to identify arrivals in the EU territory more effectively, including “adding facial images to fingerprints, including for children from six years old”.

• The deal establishes a new mechanism to ensure solidarity in a scenario where there is an “exceptional influx of third-country nationals leading to the collapse of the national asylum system”.

Who supports the agreement?

The European Commission welcomed the deal, as did the centre-right European People’s party, the Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew Europe group.

Iratxe García Pérez, who leads the Socialists and Democrats group, said “we managed a deal that not only focus on border protection but also contains solidarity with refugees as well as between member states, and upholds the right to asylum”.

Who is critical?

The Greens group and The Left group in the European parliament raised concerns about the agreement. A number of rights groups are opposed.

Why is the deal controversial?

Critics of the agreement say it undermines the right to asylum and will not solve problems.

“The proposed system will ultimately not be workable, the border procedures and detention will entail very high human costs and further administrative burdens for national authorities,” said the German MEP Terry Reintke, co-president of the Greens group.

Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European institutions office, said “the pact will almost certainly cause more people to be put into de facto detention at EU borders” and “there will be reduced safeguards for people seeking asylum in the EU, with more people channelled through substandard border asylum procedures”.

She added that “instead of prioritising solidarity through relocations and strengthening protection systems, states will be able to simply pay to strengthen external borders, or fund countries outside the EU to prevent people from reaching Europe”.

Another concern raised by Amnesty is that “the agreement reached today also allows countries to opt out of a broad range of EU asylum rules in times of increased arrivals and in case of so-called ‘instrumentalisation’ of migrants or ‘force majeure’”.

And, Geddie stressed, “this agreement reinforces the EU’s dependence on states beyond its borders to manage migration”.

Amnesty International’s European institutions office said that today’s political agreement “will lead to a surge in suffering for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants on every step of their journey.”

It added:

As we feared, the EU migration pact agreed today looks set to:

· Weaken the rights of asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants in the EU

· Worsen existing legislation

· Fail to address urgent issues in European asylum and reception systems

Amnesty also said that “in practice today’s deal will mean”:

· More people detained at European borders

· More asylum seekers in substandard procedures

· Limited support for EU border states

· Emergency measures that restrict asylum becoming the norm

· Less coherent border responses

The organisation also criticised the agreement crisis measures.

Agreed crisis & instrumentalisation measures put people at risk and open the door to rights violations:

· Asylum registrations suspended for up to 4 weeks

· ALL applicants in border procedures with fewer safeguards – involving long detention – in case of ‘instrumentalisation’.

And it pointed to concerns about the role of third countries.

It will also increase reliance on countries outside the EU to manage migration – meaning more deals like those reached with Albania, Libya, Tunisia or Türkiye to shift responsibility for protecting people outside the EU.

Lorenzo Tondo

IOM, the UN migration agency, released yesterday a short report about deaths in the Mediterranean.

The shipwreck off the coast of Libya Saturday that claimed the lives of 61 migrants is a stark reminder of the need for states to urgently address the mounting death toll on the world’s most dangerous maritime crossing where 2,571 people have died so far this year.

According to the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project (MMP), 28,320 men, women and children have died or disappeared on the Mediterranean Sea since 2014.

Nearly 90 percent (2,271) of those who have died or disappeared there in 2023 – the highest recorded since 2017 – were crossing the Central Mediterranean route.