“We will see how things turn out if [the EU’s migration policy] comes under pressure again,” Dutch Migration Minister Bart van den Brink, who only took up his role last month, told POLITICO on the sidelines of a meeting of migration ministers in Brussels last week.
Van den Brink was optimistic, however, saying that “there has been much more solidarity and relaxation in the relationship between different member states” since the EU agreed on the migration pact and that “the willingness to cooperate is also far greater” now that migration is so high on the political agenda.
The Migration and Asylum Pact, the product of years of negotiations between national governments, is due to be implemented on June 12 and will introduce stricter procedures to process asylum applications at the border, special measures for crisis situations, and a mechanism to support countries that receive the bulk of migrants by providing financial aid or by accepting relocations.
The new measures show the EU has “come a long way since 2015, when the refugee crisis erupted,” Cyprus’s Ioannides said.
Wir schaffen das
The desire to come up with new migration rules was spurred by the events of 2015, when an estimated one million people sought asylum in Europe, half of them fleeing Syria. Europe’s response tested the EU’s unity, as countries criticized the way Greece, which received the vast majority of the refugees, was handling the crisis; reinstated border controls to stop refugees from traveling onward within the bloc; and dragged their feet over an emergency relocation plan.
The European Commission’s response was to step up collaboration with Turkey, with Ankara agreeing to take back Syrian migrants who reach Greece illegally in return for financial support and the relocation in Europe of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The bloc would go on to agree migration deals with countries, including Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon.