Fluttering through the thick air of division and discord within the auditorium, the last protest directed at the MEPs in Brussels unfolded prior to the most significant vote in the EU Parliament in years. Coordinates marking the location of shipwrecks and deceased people on the move (POM) at the EU's external borders were written on paper planes launched by demonstrators. The uninvited guests, clad in white, shouted, "This Pact kills - vote no!” However, the outcry merely served as an intermezzo in an eight-year cacophonous quarrel, which reached its resolution on a knife-edge after the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, managed to restore order in the auditorium and supported the passing of the Pact's ten legislative texts - which were narrowly approved - while the names of the dead lay scattered upon the floor. With the formality of the Council's adoption of the Pact on the 14th of May, the reform is now completed, and the Commission will present an implementation plan in June.

A somewhat more jubilant President of the Parliament, flanked by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, could mark April 10th as a historic day during the subsequent press conference. More about that trinity later.

The 3 to 4-meter tall electrified and high-tech double fence that forms the border between Serbia and Hungary. Photo: Esben Okholm Friis.

More of a defense against right-wing populists in the eleventh hour than a credible solution

With European Parliament elections looming, supporters of the Pact hope that the agreement will serve as a bulwark against right-wing populist parties, which, according to an election analysis from the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, are forecasted to become the main winners of the election, with the ‘Identity and Democracy’ group potentially emerging as the third largest group in the new parliament. However, journalist and author of Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe, Daniel Trilling, questions the efficacy of this bulwark. He believes that the Pacts political compromise "risks reinforcing the radical right’s framing of migration." Furthermore, he notes that the Pact is undermined by a number of misconceptions. For instance, the concept that harsher measures to remove those deemed ineligible for asylum will lead to a greater sense of control. Referring to a report from the Asylum Information Database (AIDA), he writes in The Guardian: "The majority of people who take smuggler routes to Europe do so (...) because they are fleeing violence and persecution. They do so for a lack of safe, legal options”. People flee, and they will continue to do so, finding new routes - with greater risk - to Europe. "Cabri mort n’a pas peur du couteau" – a dead goat doesn’t fear the butcher's knife - as a refugee named Abdo said to former migration correspondent for The Guardian, Patrick Kingsley, during the journalists research expeditions through deserts, across seas, and along the Balkan route prior to writing the book "The New Odyssey : The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis".

As the press conference drew to a close, the three main figures were asked whether they feared that far-right parties would exploit the Pact for political gains during the upcoming campaign. “Skillfully”, they dodged the question.

Disturbing headlines of the Pact

The far-left criticizes the Pact, while more than 160 NGO’s unanimously urged MEPs to reject it as a setback for human rights. Even members of the major established centrist parties did not wholeheartedly embrace the agreement. Humanitarian organizations particularly refer to Article 18, the right to seek asylum, in the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. Fenix, which provides legal assistance to asylum seekers in Greece, asserts "the Pact largely erodes the rights of people applying for asylum”.

A week before the vote, Eve Geddie, Head of Amnesty International's European Institutions Office and Director of Advocacy, stated:" “It is clearer than ever that this EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will set back European asylum law for decades to come, lead to greater suffering, and put more people at risk of human rights violations at every step of their journeys”. With the same wording, NGO’s says that the agreement will have "devastating implications for the right to international protection in the bloc and greenlights abuses across Europe including racial profiling, default de facto detention and pushbacks." Decreased detention is widely criticized. Among other things, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies expresses concerns about the normalization of detention. These detention centers are also a concern for Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, who recently published an open letter addressed to members of the European Parliament and European Member States. They consider the Pact a “continuation and intensification of containment and deterrence policies, with rapid processing and returns at their core”. A quicker registration and screening process will be implemented to enhance the efficiency of asylum procedures and returns. However, concerns regarding the system’s potential for excessive speed and automation – such as to assess applicants based on nationality rather than evaluating them individually - were immediately raised from various sides.

Besides detention centers, a faster screening process for asylum applications, a crisis-and force majeure regulation, and a reformation of the Dublin Regulation, the Pact contains a decisive expansion of the Eurodac database. An advancedbiometric data identification system will be introduced, and the minimum age for data collection, including fingerprints and facial images, will be six years.

POM picking up nonfood items from Collective Aids distribution near Blazuj Temporary Reception Center, Sarajevo. Photo: Guillaume Flament.

Inhumane treatment at the EU's external borders to be continued?

The staff of Collective Aid in Calais and in the Balkans already observe the substantial risks posed to POM by restrictive asylum laws. During the organization's non-food distributions, team members are confronted with the severe living conditions faced by POM. Furthermore, as a member of the NGO-coalition Border Violence Monitoring Network, the team in Bosnia and Herzegovina collect testimonies from individuals who have experienced physical assault or inhumane treatment at the EU's external borders. Based on the broader principles of the Pact, significant changes regarding this hostile treatment of POM seems unlikely. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is experiencing a growing budget, despite their scandals and complicity in illegal pushbacks, and regardless of the Pact’s components POM will persist in taking increasingly dangerous routes.

Even with the multifaceted nature of the agreement and its pending implementation in mind, identifying silver linings remains challenging. Regardless of the Pact, a cooperation with the Parliament in Sarajevo seems to be a crucial piece in the EU's migration puzzle. Brussels recently decided to strengthen Bosnia and Herzegovina’s border and migration management through a project worth 6,4 million euros. Later in the spring, in connection with BiH’s EU-membership negotiations, von der Leyen stated that Bosnia is now "fully aligned" with the EU’s foreign and security policy and is improving its management of migration flows.

Solidarity, values and safe third countries. Question mark.

On the social media platform X, Metsola wrote that the agreement represents a “balance between solidarity and responsibility" However, the solidarity-aspect can be difficult to identify. As stated in its press release, the European Parliament notes that member states will have the option to either take responsibility for asylum applicants, make financial contributions, or provide operational support. The idea that member states will “contribute by relocating asylum applicants or beneficiaries of international protection to their territory” seems unlikely. As EuroMed Rights, a network representing 68 human rights organizations, rhetorically asked three years ago in their publication Fresh start, renewed risks. The external dimension of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum; “why would Member States now choose relocation as a form of solidarity when some avoided doing so in 2016 when it was mandatory? Reading between the lines, it’s more than anything an outstretched hand to Orban and his disciples, allowing them to buy indulgence and a way out of responsibility sharing. Indeed, the leader of the political party Fidesz has also declared that Hungary, the EU's problem child, will not accept any "irregular migrants”. Predictably, Hungary, alongside Polen, voted against when the Council, only needing a qualified majority, adopted the form. If a member state doesn’t comply with the rules, the Commission “can make use of its powers under the Treaty (infringements)”, leading to legal actions and financial sanctions.

Adding into the equation the criticized migration agreements with countries such as Libya or al-Sisi's Egypt, which commit human rights abuses with one hand while receiving economic EU support with the other, the hypocrisy of EU “solidarity” is complete. One aspect of the Pact is to take some pressure off the front-line states such as Greece and Italy. Countries, that the International President of MSF, Geo Barents, has referred to as being part of the EU’s “laboratories and testing grounds for increasingly harmful migration policies and practices”. With additional agreements with “safe” third countries in the pipeline the laboratory experiments appear poised to persist.

Flight suit and cap entangled in barbed wire – a preferred tool for the EU - in the charred remains of the Moria Camp. Photo: Esben Okholm Friis.

Both Metsola and Croo addressed the EU's engagement with third countries during the aforementioned press conference, referring to it as "mutual beneficial partnerships”. The EU aims to "continue to make agreements with third countries, like we did successfully with Tunisia, with Turkey, with Egypt, with Mauritania," said Croo. He, however, conveniently swept under the rug the agreement with Libya, which has been exposed for widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses against POM. Just as it is the case, to a certain extent, with the above-mentioned countries: Collective expulsions and beatings in Tunisia, deportations of refugees to Syria in Turkey and arbitrary detentions in Egypt. Nor did the Belgian Prime Minister mention the authoritarian regimes instrumentalization of POM to achieve political concessions. A free interpretation of "successful."

Before the vote on the 10th of April, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, said: “With the Pact we can manage one of Europe’s biggest challenges: Migration. In a sustainable way. Based on our values.” Rather than delving into the specifics of these values, she ended the speech with a football analogy/platitude about scoring, as a team, for Europe. The outcome, arguably, represents a crucial goal for the right-wing agenda. Moreover, to a greater extent, it constitutes an own goal for the EU's moral vanity and credibility.

POM picking up nonfood items from Collective Aids distribution near Ušivak Temporary Reception Centre, Sarajevo. Photo: Guillaume Flament.

Words by Esben Okholm Friis

"This Pact Kills - Vote No!" The EU's Migration Pact a False Victory rather than a Bulwark Against Right-Wing Populists