The Pact entered into application on 12 June 2026, marking a profound transformation of the European asylum system. Behind the promise of efficiency and solidarity lies a broader shift: from protecting people seeking asylum towards managing mobility, securing borders and strengthening the capacity of states to control who may enter, stay and move within Europe.

For years, the European Union has presented its migration policy as a difficult balance between human rights, border management and responsibility-sharing. The new Pact on Migration and Asylum makes that balance increasingly explicit — and increasingly unequal. Its ten legislative acts introduce common rules on screening, asylum procedures, returns, responsibility and solidarity across the EU. The result is not simply a more integrated asylum system. It is also a more integrated system of control.

When speed becomes the organising principle

The first stage is screening. People arriving irregularly, as well as some people apprehended inside EU territory, are subject to identity, security and health checks. The procedure must be completed within seven days at the external border, or three days when a person is apprehended within the territory.

Biometric data are recorded in the expanded Eurodac system, the new “the European Search Portal and Common Identity Repository”, which has become a central instrument for identifying and tracking movements within the European asylum and migration system.

Children are not excluded: biometric registration now applies from the age of six. The issue is not only the collection of fingerprints or facial images in itself, but the context in which they are collected.

The first encounter with the asylum system is increasingly focused on control – including through the use of technology – rather than on the priority of ensuring the safety and comfort of people who are often fleeing difficult situations.

The screening procedures are indeed applied under detention de facto. This matters because vulnerability is not always immediately visible. Experiences of torture, trafficking, gender-based violence, trauma or persecution may emerge only over time and in conditions that allow people to speak safely.

A system organised around rapid screening under restriction to personal freedom of movements risks hindering the emergence of vulnerabilities and reducing complex individual stories to administrative categories precisely when the consequences of misclassification can be most serious.

The 20% threshold: a self-fulfilling prophecy undermining fundamental safeguards

For those applying for asylum recognition, the next step is the border asylum procedure. Under Article 42 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1348, the mandatory border procedure applies, among other categories, to applicants from countries whose EU-wide average recognition rate for international protection is 20% or lower. The procedure is accelerated and, as a general rule, applicants remain in the border area while their claims are examined. It can last up to twelve weeks, including appeal, and longer in specific circumstances.

This creates a potentially self-reinforcing cycle: the more asylum claims are rejected, the lower the recognition rate becomes; the lower the rate, the easier it becomes to channel future applicants from the same country into an accelerated border procedure.

A statistical threshold cannot determine whether an individual needs protection. The Regulation itself recognises that exceptions must be made where the average recognition rate does not adequately reflect the protection needs of a particular category of applicants. The first Italian court decisions applying the new framework have already emphasised that the 20% figure cannot operate as an automatic trigger: authorities must still assess its relevance to the individual case.

The danger is therefore not simply faster procedures. It is the possibility that speed becomes a substitute for a careful assessment of protection needs.

Moreover, the Pact also expands the legal importance of the border beyond the physical line separating one territory from another. During the border procedure, applicants are generally not authorised to enter the territory while their claim is being examined. The European Commission itself describes this as remaining “in the border area”.

In practice, this can create a form of legal suspension: a person may be physically inside a Member State while being treated, for procedural purposes, as not yet having entered it.

This is what makes the border increasingly less a geographical line than a legal status attached to people.

Safe countries – for who?

The Pact also strengthens the use of the category of the “safe country of origin”. The first EU-wide list, adopted in 2026, includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia, alongside EU candidate countries subject to specific exceptions.

But asylum is necessarily individual. A country may be considered safe in general terms while remaining profoundly unsafe for a journalist, a political dissident, a woman facing gender-based violence, or a person persecuted because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or political activity.

Tunisia is a particularly troubling example. Research presented at the European Parliament both in 2025 and April 2026 documented testimonies describing a chain of detention, forced expulsion and trafficking between Tunisia and Libya; according to the RR[X] report, at least 7,400 people may have been sold or exchanged at the border between June 2023 and December 2025. These allegations raise a fundamental question: what does it mean to designate a country as “safe” when credible evidence points to serious and systematic abuses against migrants there?

The same question extends to the concept of safe third countries, whose role is strengthened under the new regulatory framework. Under certain agreements, people may be transferred to countries through which they have never transited, bringing these operations even closer to what can be described as de facto deportations.

Solidarity between states — but what about solidarity between people?

The Pact’s solidarity mechanism is presented as one of its major innovations. Member States can choose between relocations, financial contributions and alternative forms of solidarity.

This is solidarity between states. It does not necessarily translate into greater freedom, protection or dignity for the people at the centre of the system.

The underlying political question remains unresolved: is European solidarity primarily about sharing the administrative and financial burden of migration management, or about ensuring that people seeking protection can actually access it?

The Pact formally replaces the Dublin system with a new responsibility framework, but the principle that first-entry states carry significant responsibility remains central. Countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain therefore continue to occupy a structurally different position within the European asylum system.

European integration — for whose protection?

At a time when nationalism is once again shaping European politics, the Pact is, in one sense, a remarkable step in European integration. Ten common legislative instruments now govern crucial aspects of asylum and migration policy across the Union. But integration does not necessarily mean a transfer of power away from national governments. It can also mean harmonizing and strengthening states’ capacity to control mobility.

The question, therefore, is not only how Europe protects its borders, but what happens to people when border surveillance becomes one of the central organising principles of European governance, and borders become less a geographical line and more a legal status attached to people?

A European asylum policy worthy of its fundamental values cannot be built around deterrence alone. It requires accessible legal pathways, meaningful individual assessment, effective judicial safeguards and protection that does not depend on statistical categories or the ability of governments to outsource responsibility.

The rights of migrants are not a special category of rights.

They are part of the same question that concerns us all: how much protection can any of us expect when state power expands, while the safeguards limiting that power become increasingly difficult to access?