THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Towards a new legislative term

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 88 September 2022, the Council adopted a negotiation mandate on the Screening Regulation and the Eurodac Regulation, which, nevertheless, considerably increases responsibility and pressure for the border countries (Council of the European Union 2022a). In parallel, in June 2022, twenty-one States agreed on a Declaration on Solidarity and a Voluntary Solidarity Mechanism, (Council of the European Union 2022b), to offer a spe- cific response to the migratory difficulties of Mediterra- nean Member States of first entry by relocating asylum seekers and refugees or through financial contributions (European Commission 2022). Although in the actual Declaration, the signing States demonstrated their in- tention for this voluntary mechanism to act as model for the permanent solidarity mechanism introduced by the Regulation on Asylum and Migration Management, what actually happened is that the Commission re- leased a disappointing report on this mechanism at the end of the year. In the first seven months, only around five hundred people had been relocated (El País, 2023) Under the Czech Presidency (1 st July to 31 st Decem- ber 2022), the package approach was retrieved, backed by the European Parliament, that advocated for a reform of the Common European Asylum System which covered all the legislative proposals on the table. On 7 th September 2022, the European Parliament and the five rotating Presidencies of the Council of the European Union, France, Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain and Belgium, committed to making every effort to final- ise the CEAS reform in the current legislative period, set- ting the start of the negotiations for the co-legislators as the end of 2022 at the latest so that they might be finished in February 2024. This roadmap includes the Proposal for a Regulation on Asylum and Migration Management, the Proposal for the Crisis and Force Ma- jeure Regulation, the Proposal for the Screening Regula- tion, the Proposal for the Qualification Regulation, the Proposal for the Procedures Regulation, the Proposal to amend the Reception Directive, the Proposal to recast the Return Directive, the Proposal to recast the Eurodac Regulation and the Proposal for a Regulation on an EU Resettlement Framework. On the other hand, throughout 2022, two propos- als were debated that, although not part of the Agree- ment’s legislative package, affect elements of it, such as extended use of the border procedure. These are the Proposal for a Regulation on Instrumentalisation of Mi- gration and the amendment to the Schengen Borders Code. It is particularly concerning that both have the primordial goal of introducing the concept of “instru- mentalisation” of migration, as a mechanism available to the Member States to repeal the asylum rules, un- der certain circumstances, such as coping with a large number of persons at the EU borders, as happened at the Belarus border in 2021 (ECRE 2022). This would mean that the actions of a third country government that, according to the Member State’s evaluation, uses people in need of international protection to destabilise the EU, would have repercussions on the rights of these same people, lowering the asylum standards in terms of reception, procedure and detention. Civil society and specialist NGOs qualify this proposal as out of propor- tion, counter-productive, unfair and unnecessary. A sys- tem of exceptions, permanently available to the Member States, undermines the actual concept of the Common Asylum System, already barely harmonised and where there are sufficient flexibility mechanisms to address changing events at its borders (ECRE 2022a). During the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 8 th December 2022 (Council of the European Union 2022c), a minority of Member States blocked the adoption of a common position on the Proposal for a Regulation on Instrumentalisation of Migration, although some of its provisions may be discussed in the Crisis Regulation. In compliance with the roadmap devised in Decem- ber 2022, it was finally possible to unfreeze the negotia- tions by opening a three-way discussion (trialogue) on the Eurodac Regulation. In addition, the co-legislators countersigned provisional agreements reached in 2018 on the Proposal to amend the recast Directive on Recep- tion, the Proposal for Regulation on an EU Resettlement Framework and the Proposal for the Qualification Regu- lation. However, final adoption of these instruments will depend on progress in negotiations on other dossiers, from that package approach. The aim of the recast Reception Directive continues to determine equivalent conditions in all Member States with the intention of avoiding secondary movements of people requesting international protection. The agree- ment reached (European Parliament 2022) improves ac-