CIVICUS discusses the European Union’s (EU) new Pact on Migration and Asylum with Chiara Catelli, Project and Advocacy Officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), a civil society network of over 160 organisations that works to ensure human rights and justice for undocumented migrants.

The EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, which overhauls the bloc’s asylum and return procedures, took effect in June. Implementation was still in its early stages when, in early August, a reported 78,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, becoming the largest mass arrival in the territory’s history. As many as a hundred people died attempting the crossing, and the scale of the crisis prompted an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers, reigniting long-running disputes among EU states over how migration should be managed.

What will the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum change?

Despite its name, the pact mainly overhauls asylum rules, though it also affects migration more broadly. It introduces new procedures that fundamentally change how the EU manages asylum and strengthens the mechanisms for returning people. In practice, this means channelling people more rapidly into asylum or return procedures, which is problematic.

We believe the pact rests on a false assumption that people’s only options are to apply for asylum or return to their country of origin. In reality, there are other routes to regular residence in the EU, such as family reasons, humanitarian grounds and work, and we fear the new system will make all these much harder to access.

The asylum system will place much greater emphasis on identifying, screening and rapidly processing people who enter or are found in the EU without authorisation.

A new screening procedure will be mandatory for people entering the EU irregularly, with a parallel procedure for those already undocumented in the EU. Both are closely linked to detention. We fear that to carry out screening at the national level, member states will increase detention or screen people while their liberty is already restricted.

We’re also concerned the pact could encourage discriminatory practices to identify people who are living irregularly in the EU. There’s already evidence of these in migration enforcement, and this pact may amplify them.

People considered less likely to receive international protection will go through a fast-track procedure and could be detained with few general safeguards. Because children and people with vulnerabilities aren’t automatically excluded from this fast-track procedure, we fear individual circumstances won’t be properly assessed.

The whole framework is now geared towards boosting returns and towards the idea that if someone doesn’t qualify for asylum, return is the only option. We don’t believe this is true. EU legislation allows member states to grant national permits if they choose to.

Implementation is also extremely slow. As a result, the pact’s few safeguards, such as free legal aid and counselling, simply won’t be in place in time.

In light of recent events in Ceuta, what’s the gap between EU law and reality on the ground?

Politicians have framed recent events in Ceuta in a way that misses the point entirely. What’s urgently needed are safe, regular pathways for migrants to seek work or protection in Europe.

That would mean people aren’t forced into desperate, dangerous journeys, even when, as in Ceuta, they’re driven by disinformation or false promises.

Instead, governments are using any excuse to increase sanctions and repression, without questioning the EU’s model of paying countries such as Libya, Morocco and Turkey to intercept migrants. This leaves Europe diplomatically and politically exposed and, more importantly, does nothing to address why people move in the first place.

Many EU governments’ reaction is to blame smugglers, which is a too-easy answer to a complex problem. Smugglers thrive because the migration system allows it, but governments won’t ask why. That’s a political choice.

Who backs the pact, and what does this tell us about where EU migration politics is heading?

EU states’ approaches to the pact are inconsistent, and politics is moving faster than EU lawmaking. The states that voted for and approved the pact two years ago are now not fully implementing it.

Many EU states are pushing to delay implementation further. In June, over 20 of them asked the European Commission to step in and make returns easier still.

The political fallout from Ceuta also revealed diverging approaches. Right after the incident, Denmark and Italy published a letter, backed by 22 member states, accusing Spain of failing to control the EU’s external border. Italy then reintroduced border controls with Spain, and Spain retaliated. So member states agreed on rules we consider questionable, and within two months were proposing unilateral responses instead. Under EU law, the response should be based on solidarity.

An issue that could be resolved more easily ends up being driven by political competition over who can look toughest on migration, rather than by evidence of what works or approaches that protect everyone’s fundamental rights.

The answer shouldn’t be more repression or more externalisation. Outsourcing migration responsibilities to non-EU countries doesn’t solve the problem. Ceuta shows the opposite is true. For us, the answer needs to be more regular and safe pathways into the EU to seek both protection and work.

What does the EU’s return regulation involve, and why is civil society campaigning against it?

The return regulation was agreed in June. We’re now waiting for the final green light for it to become EU law, expected in September. We consider it deeply problematic and have campaigned against it for over a year alongside many other civil society organisations (CSOs), co-signing a joint statement backed by over 250 organisations. It will extend detention to up to 30 months, including for children, broaden the potential grounds for detention and encourage member states to adopt investigative measures.

We fear this will leave authorities free to raid private homes and other premises, potentially including CSO offices, migrant shelters and other places where people usually feel safe.

The regulations try to boost returns in various ways, including by making returns possible to any country, even where the person concerned has no link to it, through what are known as ‘return hubs’. We’ll also likely see more restrictions on movement and new reporting obligations that oblige social services to report people. Although this isn’t in the legislation itself, it’s a potential consequence of investigative measures. People may lose trust in the system and become afraid to see a doctor, go to school or use other basic services, deepening their vulnerability.

Punitive measures will also require cooperation with authorities. Anyone considered to be not cooperating could face sanctions, such as financial penalties, criminal proceedings and detention, yet there’s no clear definition of what not cooperating actually means.

The EU framework also allows for the criminalisation of the facilitation of irregular migration. Following Ceuta, the Commission has proposed a revision to the relevant directive, not previously a priority, but one it now wants legislators to take up. We’ll be monitoring this closely, since the criminalisation of solidarity with migrants is an area PICUM covers directly. Our monitoring has identified around 110 cases per year of judicial proceedings against people for helping migrants.

Why is civil society calling for regularisation of migrants’ status, and what stands in its way?

From a civil society perspective, regularisation and access to permits are crucial. Under EU law, states can regularise migrants and grant work permits.

We’re seeing more attacks on this from right-wing groups, and even the EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, said last week that he doesn’t like regularisation. He acknowledged it’s a member state competence, but made clear the Commission doesn’t approve of it at the moment.

But regularisation has been implemented by various EU governments, including Italy in 2020, Ireland in 2022, Germany in 2023 and Greece in 2024. These were short-term programmes, but they show that even when politics doesn’t push for this kind of policy, governments often do it anyway, because they recognise it’s sensible, needed and simply the right thing to do. It addresses the vulnerable situations people otherwise find themselves in, and it’s good for society overall, since it allows people to integrate into society and the labour market. We have a labour market problem, and the answers exist. They’re just not politically appealing right now.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.