Representatives of the member states of the European Union confirmed the agreement on the final form of the migration package in Brussels on Wednesday. The Czechs abstained, Hungary and Poland were against. The stance of the bloc states approved on Wednesday is final, the new migration and asylum rules will only be formally approved by the Union ministers, specifically at the meeting of finance ministers next week on Tuesday. The European Parliament supported the package in a plenary session at the beginning of April.
Brussels
13:28 8/5/2024 (Updated: 14:03 08/05/2024)
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The negotiators of the European Parliament, the Spanish Presidency as a representative of the member countries of the bloc and the European Commission agreed on the final form of the migration and asylum pact last December | Source: European Parliament
The series of standards provides, among other things, for more effective checks on migrants and for the faster return of unsuccessful asylum seekers to their countries of origin. It also introduces the principle that those countries of the Union that are overloaded with migration pressure will be helped by others in solidarity, either by taking over part of the migrants from them, or by supporting them financially or materially.
In the European Parliament, the vote on the package, which consists of ten legislative proposals, was a drama until the last moment. Support for all ten regulations was not at all certain, and individual factions counted every vote.
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At Wednesday’s meeting of the so-called Coreper II, i.e. the ambassadors of the member states of the European Union, the representatives of the countries dealt with the preparation of the ministerial meeting for next week.
The positions of the individual countries showed exactly what the positions of the ministers will be during the formal approval next week. Therefore, it is not expected that the package would subsequently fail. Hungary and Poland failed to convince other states to form a blocking minority together. Slovakia rejected two parts of the pact, and abstained from the rest.
The negotiators of the European Parliament, the Spanish Presidency as a representative of the member countries of the bloc and the European Commission agreed on the final form of the migration and asylum pact last December. The Czech Republic, which had reservations about this compromise, abstained on February 8 when the agreement was confirmed in Brussels by the ambassadors of the European Union countries.
‘The first step to an effective solution’
The Czech government then came to the conclusion that the final form of the Pact on Migration and Asylum is worse for the Czech Republic than the one in which the Czech Republic participated during its presidency. The Czech Ministry of the Interior stated that the reform steps are less ambitious than the Czech Republic expected, the administrative burden is increasing and the possibility of effectively preventing illegal migration already at the external border of the European Union is decreasing.
The Czech Republic reiterated its reservations in a statement prepared by the Ministry of the Interior, which Prague already presented at the February meeting. In the document, the Czech Republic justifies its vote and mentions that the compromise form from the trialogue is not entirely according to the ideas of the Czech government.
“It is valid that the Czech Republic has delayed, in accordance with the mandate approved by the government,” said Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan (STAN). According to the Deputy Prime Minister, the Czech Republic had reservations about the pact.“The resulting form is more bureaucratic and weakens the mandatory border procedure compared to the original proposal. But it is an important first step towards an effective solution to illegal migration,” he said.
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According to him, it introduces mandatory detention, screening of migrants and sets the obligations of member countries. But the Czech Republic wants to go even further in protecting the European space and is actively working on subsequent steps, he said.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) considers it necessary to go beyond the European Union’s migration pact and discourage illegal migrants from coming to Europe.
“The solution is a more rigorous asylum procedure even before entering the territory of the European Union, faster returns outside the territory of the European Union, but also other measures, the proposals of which we are now preparing. The Czech Republic co-founded a group of countries that want to deal with illegal migration really strongly,” said Fiala.
Andrej Babiš, head of the ANO movement, also commented on the migration package. “The whole thing was caused by Fial’s government and especially Vít Rakušan during the Czech presidency (in the second half of 2022), when they prepared the whole thing and invited migrants to Europe,” informed the media. “The fact that they delayed now does not matter at all in the end, they should have been against like the entire V4,” he said.
CTK
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