The New Pact on Migration and Asylum, composed of various legislative acts including the Screening Regulation, the Eurodac Regulation, the Asylum Procedure Regulation, the Return Border Procedure Regulation, the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, the Crisis Regulation, the Qualification Regulation, the Reception Conditions Directive and the Resettlement Regulation, was adopted today by the Council of the European Union. The texts had to be adopted by a qualified majority. Only Poland and Hungary explicitly spoke out against all instruments.

Major new features of the reform include inter alia (i) the mandatory border procedure to make a quick assessment at the EU's external borders of whether applications are unfounded or inadmissible, (ii) a solidarity mechanism combining mandatory solidarity to support Member States dealing with a strong influx of migrants with flexibility as regards the type of contributions (relocations, financial contributions or alternative solidarity measures and (iii) better management of crisis situations allowing Member States to derogate from certain rules and to request enhanced solidarity from other EU countries. 

The European Commission will present a common implementation plan in June 2024. Each Member State must then submit a national implementation plan by the end of this year. 

For further details, please read the press release from the Council of the European Union and the press release from the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration (in Dutch only). You can also find a detailed explanatory memo on the Pact here.