EU parliament votes to end first country asylum rules

New pact ends the Dublin system that forced the country by which a migrant entered the bloc to process their application.

Ursula von der Leyen hails the vote, saying it would ‘secure European borders while ensuring the protection of the fundamental rights’ of migrants. Picture: AFP

The EU has voted in favour of a sweeping reform of migration laws that will lift the rule requiring refugees to apply for asylum in the first country they arrive in.

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum was passed by the ­European parliament overnight on Wednesday in response to soaring asylum applications and huge numbers of migrants languishing in squalid camps.

It ends the Dublin system, under which the first country through which a migrant entered the bloc had to process their application for asylum. From 2026, member states can instead move refugees to other countries, where they would then apply for asylum.

The reform package will both harden border procedures and force all the bloc’s 27 nations to share responsibility.

The parliament’s main political groups overcame opposition from far-right and far-left parties to pass the pact – enshrining a difficult overhaul nearly a decade in the making.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen hailed the vote, saying it would “secure European borders … while ensuring the protection of the fundamental rights” of migrants.

“We must be the ones to decide who comes to the EU and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers,” she said.

EU governments – a majority of which previously approved the pact – also welcomed its adoption. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Greece’s Migration Minister, Dimitris Kairidis, both called it “historic”.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed what he termed “the best possible compromise.”

There was dissent when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban derided the reform as “another nail in the coffin of the EU”.

“Unity is dead, secure borders are no more. Hungary will never give in to the mass migration frenzy! We need a change in Brussels in order to Stop Migration!” Mr Orban said in a post to X.

Members of the European Parliament vote in Brussels on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

For very different reasons, migrant charities also slammed the pact, which includes building border centres to hold asylum-seekers and sending some to outside “safe” countries.

Amnesty International said the EU was “shamefully” backing a deal “they know will lead to greater human suffering” while the Red Cross federation urged member states “to guarantee humane conditions for asylum-seekers and migrants affected”.

The vote itself was initially disrupted by protesters yelling “The pact kills – vote no!”, while dozens of demonstrators outside the parliament building in Brussels held up placards with slogans decrying the reform.

The parliament’s far-left grouping, which maintains that the reforms are incompatible with Europe’s commitment to upholding human rights, said it was a “dark day”. It was “a pact with the devil,” said Damien Careme, a Green MEP.

As well as Mr Orban, other far-right MEPs also opposed the passage of the 10 laws making up the pact as insufficient to stop irregular migrants they accuse of spreading insecurity and threatening to “submerge” European identity.

The pact’s measures are due to come into force in 2026, after the European Commission sets out how it would be implemented.

New border centres would hold irregular migrants while their asylum requests were vetted. Deportations of those deemed inadmissible would be sped up.

The pact also requires EU countries to take in thousands of asylum-seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece or, if they refuse, to provide money or other resources to the under-pressure nations.

One measure particularly criticised by migrant charities is the sending of asylum-seekers to countries outside the EU deemed “safe”, if the migrant has sufficient ties to that country.

The pact resulted from years of arduous negotiations spurred by a massive inflow of irregular migrants in 2015, many from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.

Under current EU rules, the arrival country bears responsibility for hosting and vetting ­asylum-seekers, and returning those deemed inadmissable. That has put southern frontline states under pressure and fuelled far-right opposition.

A political breakthrough came in December when a weighted majority of EU countries backed the reforms, overcoming opposition from Hungary and Poland.

In parallel with the reform, the EU has been multiplying the same sort of deal it struck with Turkey in 2016 to stem migratory flows.

It has reached accords with Tunisia and, most recently, Egypt that are portrayed as broader cooperation arrangements. Many MEPs have criticised the deals.

AFP