The European Union’s Pact on Migration and Asylum has taken effect across all 27 member states, ending a two-year transition and handing governments firmer tools to decide who enters the bloc and who must leave.
The new rules began applying on June 12, completing a reform first proposed by the European Commission in September 2020 and adopted in May 2024.
The package brings together 10 pieces of legislation covering screening at the external border, asylum processing, a shared fingerprint database and a solidarity mechanism between member states.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has framed the change as a turning point, saying the Pact created the conditions “to decide who can come to Europe, who can stay, and who must leave”.
Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner has said the new system introduces efficiency and strengthens the bloc’s hand at the frontier.
WHAT CHANGES AT THE BORDER
Under the new framework, anyone arriving irregularly — including after a rescue at sea or an interception at the border — must now pass through a common screening before being formally admitted.
That screening covers identity, security, vulnerability and health checks, the European Commission has said.
The Pact also introduces an accelerated procedure for applicants from countries whose nationals rarely qualify for protection. The fast-track applies where the recognition rate is below 20 per cent.
The reform harmonises the rules for registering and examining claims and shortens the timetable for cases judged to have little chance of success, leaving fewer avenues to prolong a stay.
RESISTANCE TO FORCED RELOCATION
The Pact also obliges member states, each year, either to take in asylum seekers from countries under pressure or to pay into the system instead.
That element has met resistance. The relocation target for 2026 was 21,000 people, yet pledges have fallen below half that figure — a sign of how reluctant many capitals remain to accept mandatory quotas.
Spain was designated a “member state under migratory pressure” in December, making it eligible to draw on the scheme.
A separate Crisis Regulation lets governments set aside the usual standards during mass arrivals, during force majeure or where a hostile state is judged to be using immigration as a weapon.
THE PUSH TO RAISE RETURNS
The reform’s central purpose is to close the gap between removal orders issued and removals carried out.
The European Commission has estimated that only around 20 per cent of return orders are currently enforced. The Commission said the rate reached 28 per cent in 2025, the highest in a decade, though it judged the figure still far too low.
That shortfall is to be tackled by a separate Return Regulation, on which the European Parliament and the Council struck a provisional deal on June 1, 2026.
The regulation, which replaces the 2008 Returns Directive, would create a standardised European Return Order, allow detention of up to 24 months for those who refuse to leave, and permit “return hubs” in third countries for immigrants with a final removal order. It has yet to be formally adopted.
Five governments — the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Greece and Denmark — have already formed a frontrunner group pressing the offshore-hub model, as Brussels Signal reported last month.
A BLOC MOVING RIGHT ON IMMIGRATION
The returns drive commands broad support. The European Parliament backed the opening of negotiations on March 26 by 389 votes to 206, with 32 abstentions, a majority drawn from the centre-right and right-wing groups.
Differences remain over method rather than direction. France and Spain have questioned whether return centres would work, and the Spanish Government has ruled out using them itself, even as it presses Brussels for help with its own arrivals.
Rights groups have objected. The International Rescue Committee has called the new regime a rollback of protections, while Human Rights Watch has argued it weakens the right to asylum — criticism the Pact’s supporters dismiss as a defence of a system that had stopped working.
With well over 400,000 people ordered to leave the EU each year and most still remaining, governments across the mainstream have concluded the old model was untenable — a judgment now written into the bloc’s law, and one the return hubs and the tougher rules to come are designed to carry further.
