THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Towards a new legislative term

MIGRATION AND ASYLUM POLICIES 91 on that date. The most concerning questions include introduction of the “no-entry” legal pretence in ar- ticle 4(1), the risk of deficient reception conditions and excessive use of detention, plus the delay in ac- cess to the international protection procedure and all its guarantees. On the other hand, the Regula- tion determines the creation of independent national mechanisms making sure that fundamental rights are respected at external borders, and that the guar- antees and field of application of these rights have been strengthened by the position of the European Parliament. – Proposal for Regulation on Asylum and Migra- tion Management : This Regulation incorporates the Dublin III rules to determine the responsibility of studying asylum requests, maintaining the country of first entry’s criteria. It also determines a solidarity mechanism which is only mandatory in the event of migratory pressure and for arrivals after search and rescue operations. The latest Council presidencies are making an effort to move forward separately in the solidarity mechanism, with the pretension of con- solidating a relocation quota minimum as the main contribution (Nielsen 2022), but also by means of return sponsorship and/or development of capacities in the external dimension. In this respect, the Euro- pean Parliament’s negotiation mandate, approved on 20 th April 2023, eliminates the concept of “return sponsorship” and prioritises relocation as the way of contributing to solidarity. Furthermore, it gives more weighting to other criteria to determine responsibil- ity, making the first country of entry’s responsibility residual. The aim is to determine a Council position for summer 2023, and the European Parliament has announced that if it has not made enough progress on this Regulation by then, this might block the rest of the negotiations. – Proposal for Regulation on the Crisis and Force Majeure situations . This Regulation de- vises a system for situations of migratory pressure or force majeure, making it possible for a Member State declared to be in a “crisis situation”, in deter- mined circumstances, to set aside the regular asy- lum acquis, which might lead to extended border procedures, but also activate mandatory solidarity contributions faster. It is worrying that its aim is to repeal the Temporary Protection Directive by creat- ing the “immediate protection” status which has fewer guarantees. In this respect, the European Par- liament’s position is very positive, as approved on 20 th April 2023, which defended and protected Tem- porary Protection, eliminated the concept of “force majeure” and has managed to secure that in crisis situations, the only possible and mandatory solidarity contribution is relocation. However, there is a worry- ing risk of extensive application of exceptions to the procedural guarantees and suspension of the right to asylum proposed by some Member States within the Council, although its negotiation mandate has still not been reached. – Proposal to amend the Regulation establish- ing Common Procedure for international pro- tection . The European Parliament stated its position on 20 th April 2023, while the Council only achieved a partial agreement in December 2022. This proposal came about due to the introduction of a new accel- erated border procedure for asylum and return, and its link to Screening and the recast Return Directive. The key to the disagreements is the compulsory na- ture of the border procedure. There is also particular concern regarding the automatic suspension effect of the resources and the channelling of the asylum applications towards the border procedure depend- ing on nationality, risking the respect for the principle of non-refoulement and individualised processing of asylum requests. – Recast of the Return Directive . The Council reached a partial agreement in June 2019, although the European Parliament still does not have negotia- tion positioning and in 2020, a new speaker, Tineke Strik was appointed (ALE). The most controversial as- pects are the border return procedures, the definition of a flight risk, detention times and the increase in obligations for people subject to return procedures. The current situation demonstrates that difficulties remain to reach a consensus between the countries that lie on the EU external border, who require a fair bal- ance between solidarity and shared responsibility, and the fight by the remaining Member States to strengthen migratory controls and transfer international protection