EU Reaches Deal Over Illegals

From EuroNews: "'Historic day': EU strikes major deal to reform migration policy after three years of bitter debates." The deal does away with the prior requirement that all EU members accept illegals but now allows nations to not have to accept illegals, but pay a "tax" if they don't accept illegals:

    Crucially, it does not alter the so-called "Dublin principle," which says the responsibility for an asylum application lies first and foremost with the first country of arrival.

    Overall, it is meant to cover the "internal dimension" of migration while the "external dimension" is addressed through tailor-made deals with neighbouring countries, like Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt.

    The five laws contained in the New Pact are:

• The Screening Regulation, which envisions a pre-entry procedure to swiftly examine an asylum seeker's profile and collect basic information such as nationality, age, fingerprints and facial image. Health and security checks will also be carried out.
• The amended Eurodac Regulation, which updates the Eurodac, the large-scale database that will store the biometric evidence collected during the screening process. The database will shift from counting applications to counting applicants to prevent multiple claims under the same name.
• The amended Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR), which sets two possible steps for migrants: the traditional asylum procedure, which usually takes several months to complete, and a fast-tracked border procedure, meant to last a maximum of 12 weeks. The border procedure will apply to migrants who pose a risk to national security and those who come from countries with low recognition rates, such as Morocco, Pakistan and India. These migrants will not be allowed to enter the national territory and instead be kept at facilities on the border, creating a "legal fiction of non-entry."
• The Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (AMMR), which establishes a system of "mandatory solidarity" that will offer countries three options to manage migration flows: relocate a certain number of asylum seekers, pay a contribution for each claimant they refuse to relocate, and finance operational support. Brussels insists the system will not force any member state to accept refugees as long as they contribute through any of the other two options.
• The Crisis Regulation, which foresees exceptional rules that will apply when the bloc's asylum system is threatened by a sudden and massive arrival of refugees, as was the case during the 2015-2016 migration crisis, or by a situation of force majeure, like the COVID-19 pandemic. In these circumstances, national authorities will be allowed to apply tougher measures, including longer detention periods.