Overview
Recent developments in European Union migration and asylum policy have stirred significant political debate and actions among member states. The Netherlands has signaled a potential withdrawal from future treaty modifications in EU migration law. Hungary has supported this sentiment. Concurrently, Germany has intensified border controls amidst rising right-wing political influence, and Italy has temporarily reinstated border controls amid security concerns. These shifts underscore a growing resistance against the EU’s framework on migration and asylum.
In a significant shift reflecting wider European discontent, Netherlands Foreign Minister Marjolein Faber has announced the country’s potential opt-out from future EU treaty modifications on migration and asylum, a move emblematic of its new right-wing government’s agenda. This stance has found an ally in Hungary, while Germany has introduced tighter border controls amidst political pressure from the far-right. With several EU countries reconsidering their stance on migration policies, the ongoing debates highlight deeper tensions between national sovereignty and EU-level regulations, bringing to the forefront critical questions about the future of migration management in Europe.
In a letter to the European Commission and the European Parliament, Netherlands Foreign Minister Marjolein Faber stated that in the event of a treaty modification regarding existing EU law on migration and asylum, the Netherlands would “opt-out” of the framework, further implementing the new Dutch government’s right-wing agenda. For now, however, the Netherlands will still implement the European Pact on Migration and Asylum as a priority.
Hungary joined the Netherlands’ request. According to the countries’ governments, these legal mechanisms pose a considerable obstacle to further securing the countries’ interior well-being, like health, employment, and social housing,
Adding to the “leave our frontiers alone” frenzy, Germany commenced stronger control on all of its borders to cut down on irregular migration. The move came at a sensitive time in German politics, with the far-right AfD party gaining electoral support in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony.
Several EU Member States have recently reinstated Schengen Border Controls. Due to the 2024 G7 Meeting and, most importantly, “turmoil in the Middle East and possible risk of terrorist infiltration in irregular migration flow,” Italy reintroduced border controls beginning on June 16 and ending on December 18. Former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini is currently facing kidnap and dereliction of duty charges, as he blocked a boat of irregular migrants from docking on Italian coasts for about three weeks.
It is clear that border control, illegal migration and asylum procedures are important topics in the continent’s political life. With countries contemplating leaving existing EU-level agreements and strengthening border control measures, one can only wonder: why are some “right wing” governments continuously critiquing EU-level legislation on migration and asylum? Are the political movements behind these governments somehow “incompatible” with the concrete EU mechanisms on irregular migration and asylum, or is this a “symptom” of a political issue? In the following paragraphs, I will be trying to explore this question.
The European Pact on Migration and Asylum
The European Pact on Migration and Asylum was approved after the lessons of the 2015-2016 migrant refugee crisis, in order to have structured and planned solutions to the continuously growing number of irregular migrants and asylum seekers. The Pact conclusively builds upon a framework of rules concerning verification, control, preparation, application processing, and eventually, return procedures.
The Pact consists of three main dimensions:
1. The procedural “robustness” of asylum application reviews and the general implementation of border management policies are mentioned several times in the document. The Pact emphasizes that while the rules must be strictly implemented, they should nevertheless be harmonious with the general EU Framework, building on a foundational trust.
Coming from a 2020 proposal to the European Parliament, the document re-introduces a procedure called pre-entry screening. Based on this new instrument, all third-country nationals who have crossed the EU Border without authorization will undergo a quick and efficient procedure to identify their status. This will include identification, health and security checks as well as fingerprinting and registration in a European-level database.
This step will accelerate the status identification of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, consequently offering a more effective way of determining future steps.
2. In 2020, the European Commission made yet another proposal, this time to unify asylum and return procedures in a single legal instrument, thus repealing Directive 2013/32/EU on Common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection. Through the proposal, easier and more efficient procedures can be put in place. For example, asylum claims with low chances of being accepted can be processed rapidly, without the applicant needing to be in the territory of an individual member state. In addition, the Pact mentions that applicants can be relocated to another Member State during the application processing.
3. Referring to a 2020 proposal that would integrate a common framework and asylum management, the Pact addresses the need for a solidarity mechanism. This would entail Member States supporting each other on return/relocation procedures, with different Member States taking the responsibility to conclude these procedures.
One could safely argue that these three points provide a solid and clear set of rules aimed at speeding up procedures for asylum and irregular migration. But if that is the case, why the sudden Dutch and Hungarian requests to potentially opt out, considering the right-wing agenda of these countries’ respective governments?
As mentioned before, the Pact outlines the key mechanisms, proposals, and principles that would lead to more effective and quicker asylum application, migration, and return procedures. Considering that it is in the right wing’s interest for these quicker and more effective procedures to take place, the Netherlands and Hungary threatening to leave the Pact seems quite a paradoxical move. Furthermore, it is quite difficult technically to simply “leave” the Pact, unless making a specific reservation in the negotiating and ratifying process of the treaty.
Furthermore, Germany’s move to implement stronger border controls is being interpreted as something that leans towards the style of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, when in fact, the general principle of the Pact is a more robust and fair set of border control procedures, and Germany is doing nothing but implementing that same spirit.
With Orbán describing immigration as a “disintegrating factor”, Hungary’s support for the Netherlands’ opt-out doesn’t seem to be a legislative critique of the Pact but rather a much more conclusive, large stance. Even Marjolein Faber has used this argument before, with asylum affecting the demographics of the Netherlands. Faber has been widely criticized in the past for using the word “omvolking” (population replacement), which is a term that was widely used in Nazi propaganda.
All in all, the “opt-out”/critiquing EU-level migration policy doesn’t seem as much of a technical solution, but rather a political move, emphasizing “right-wing” nationalistic tendencies, focusing on the individual states’ prerogative to decide on the issue of immigration itself, not on the technical mechanisms of the issue.
