Mattias Lücke, project head of the MEDAM project and senior researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, comments on the European Commission's New Pact for Asylum and Migration (released September 23, 2020):
"The Commission proposal is a key step towards an EU asylum system that enables member states to manage immigration in line with their policy preferences while protecting refugees.
Above all, the New Pact takes the mutual interdependence of the three main policy areas seriously: First, the EU will work closely with countries of origin and transit to protect refugees in countries of first asylum, combat people smuggling and contain irregular migration, and promote mutually beneficial legal migration. Second, the EU's external border will be supervised closely so that all irregular immigrants are identified and go through a fast and fair asylum procedure. Third, all EU member states must support member states of first arrival that are overburdened by a large inflow of irregular immigrants. In doing so, they are normally free to choose between hosting refugees or supporting mandatory returns of rejected asylum seekers.
In the coming months, EU member states will need to work through the details of the proposed pact with the Commission and European Parliament. In particular, to become functional, the proposal relies heavily on returning rejected asylum seekers smoothly to their countries of origin. So far, multiple bureaucratic and political barriers in both EU member states and countries of origin have caused returns to fail frequently or at least become costly and tedious.
Nevertheless, the New Pact remains the most promising attempt so far to overcome the prevailing practices of securitization and deterrence at the external EU border and to promote humane control of migration to the EU.
Media Contact:
Melanie Radike
Communication Manager
Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM)
T +49 431 8814-329
melanie.radike@medam-migration.eu
Mercator Dialogue on Asylum
and Migration (MEDAM)
Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Kiellinie 66 | 24105 Kiel
T +49 (431) 8814-1
F +49 (431) 8814-500
www.ifw-kiel.de
Prof. Dr. Matthias Lücke
Senior Researcher and Academic Co-Director
Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM)
T +49 431 8814-497
matthias.luecke@ifw-kiel.de
https://www.medam-migration.eu/ - More proposals on European asylum and migration policy can be found on the website of the MEDAM project.
Criteria of this press release:
Business and commerce, Journalists, Scientists and scholars
Economics / business administration, Politics, Social studies
transregional, national
Transfer of Science or Research
English
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).