New European Union Regulation

Translated by Giulia Maffeis

Migration remains a topic of debate and continuous conflict within the European Union and its member states. To fight this issue, a new regulation has been adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, upon proposal by the European Commission, aiming to address some gaps in this topic.

The political agreement between the parties was reached in December 2024, when after three days of continuous debate, it finally came to a draft, subsequently adopted in Parliament on April 10, 2024, and adopted in the Council on May 14, 2024.

This is described as a revolutionary moment in the European Union's integration process towards a communal policy regarding asylum and migration.

"December 20, 2023, will go down in history as the day the EU reached a fundamental agreement on a new set of rules for handling migration and asylum. Once again, Europe has defied predictions. I am very proud that we have achieved results and provided solutions with the Pact on Migration and Asylum," wrote Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, on X.

The Dublin Regulation, in force since 1997, stipulates that the sole responsible for examining asylum requests and the reception of a migrant is the country in which the migrant arrives. This system has faced various objections, especially from countries considered as first entry points such as Italy, Malta, Spain, and Greece. Reaching an agreement has never been easy, despite various reform attempts in the following years.

To this day, a new regulation has been presented aiming to "determine the member state responsible for examining each application for international protection and ensure a fairer distribution of responsibility among member states through a mandatory but flexible solidarity mechanism," as reported by the Council of the European Union's official website.

The main changes proposed by this new regulation can be summarized as:

Border procedure: this term refers to a special procedure that can be used for migrants who could be considered a danger or who come from safe countries, or countries with an asylum acceptance rate below 20%. It provides for a maximum solution time of twelve weeks before transfer to appropriate facilities if the request is approved, or repatriation if it is rejected.

Eurodac database: it's a system aiming to provide more information and data on special categories of migrants.

Mandatory solidarity mechanism: tt's a duty of collaboration between countries that most frequently receive migrants and those within the Union. They must decide whether to accept a certain number of migrants, provide operational assistance to the receiving country, or pay 20,000 euros for each applicant they refuse to accept into a common Union fund. If one of the Union's internal countries refuses to fulfil this obligation, it will be the Commission's responsibility to start an infringement procedure, which could involve legal action for non-compliance before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

In addition to this, measures have been introduced to redistribute the responsibility of states that receive the highest number of migrants, with transfer rules in the presence of special conditions, such as family reunification.

It will be the Commission's job to develop a common implementation plan to be introduced in June 2024 and implemented six months after the regulations come into force.