On 22 June, the European Council agreed to adopt the main elements of the first stage of the phased New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which was first proposed by the European Commission in September 2020. In so doing, the Member States agreed to begin negotiations with the European Parliament on two migration management tools: the Eurodac Regulation and the Screening Regulation. According to the Commission’s press release welcoming this movement by the Council, the Eurodac Regulation ‘aims to modernise the database of asylum seekers and irregular migrants in order to better manage applications and fight against irregular movements’, in part by monitoring the movements of irregular migrants between Member States. The Screening regulation, meanwhile, ‘puts in place a pre-entry screening that should be applicable to all non-EU country nationals who are present at the external border without fulfilling the entry conditions, including after disembarkation, following a search and rescue operation’.
In addition to this, eighteen Member States, including Ireland, and three associated States adopted a declaration providing a voluntary solidarity mechanism to support ‘frontline Member States’, that is, those states at the external borders of the EU that receive high numbers of displaced persons, including those fleeing Ukraine. The solidarity mechanism will take the form of contributions to frontline States, whether financial or in the form of relocating displaced persons to other participating States.
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