THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Towards a new legislative term

87 This legislative cycle began with by announcing a New European Pact on Migration and Asylum in November 2019, intended to drive legislative reform of the Com- mon European Asylum System (CEAS) which began in 2016, and will probably end without a global agree- ment on all the instruments. The reform is based on new screening prior to entry (identity, health and safety, a preliminary examination of vulnerabilities and registering biometric data on Euro- dac) for nationals of third countries at external borders who do not meet the entry conditions, to subsequently channel people requesting international protection to- wards the border procedure or ordinary asylum proce- dure and persons without protection needs towards the return procedure, either because they have not request- ed international protection or because they have been denied it. All these procedures mainly fall to the first country of entry, as the criteria to determine the Mem- ber State responsible for studying each asylum request have not varied essentially. In cases of crisis or force ma- jeure, the responsible Member State is allowed to ease their obligations and the remaining Member States can increase their solidarity contributions in terms of distri- bution of asylum seekers and returns of people who do not need international protection. All this is combined with the external dimension of migration, which includes strengthened cooperation with third countries when managing migratory routes to enter the European Union, readmission agreements with said states and technical cooperation agreements with clauses that condition many aspects, from develop- ment aid to collaboration at border control. To design these complex inner workings, in 2020 the Commission presented the Proposal for a Screening Regulation, the Proposal to amend the Eurodac Regu- lation (on the 2016 proposal), the Proposal to amend the Procedures Regulation (on the 2016 proposal), the Proposal to amend the Qualification Regulation (on the 2016 proposal), the Proposal to amend the Reception Conditions Directive (on the 2016 proposal), the Pro- posal for a Regulation on Asylum and Migration Man- agement, the Proposal for the Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation However, three years later, seven since legislative re- form began on the Common European Asylum System, negotiations are progressing very slowly, and time is pressing as the current legislative cycle comes to an end. Although 2021 only saw agreement from the co- legislators to approve the recast of the Blue Card Direc- tive and the Regulation setting up the new EU Asylum Agency (EUAA), in 2022 there has been scarce progress, despite efforts from the various rotating Presidencies of the Council of the European Union to unblock negotia- tions.  The French Presidency (1 st January to 30 th June 2022) proposed a gradual focus to move forwards, firstly in the negotiations for Agreement proposals that would be less controversial among Member States (Council of the European Union 2022) Spain, Cyprus, Italy, Greece and Malta, all countries on the European Union’s southern border (Med 5), ac- cepted this gradual focus, on the condition that the principles of equal distribution of responsibility and soli- darity were respected. Consequently, between June and Migration and asylum policies Elena Muñoz