The European Pact on Migration and Asylum: Border Containment and Frontline States

Abstract

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum contains two pieces of proposed legislation which raise several concerns. A closer look at the Proposal for a Screening Regulation and the Proposal for Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation reveals that the frontline States are obliged to become border guards in an exacerbated way. The legislation is excessively technical and unrelated to the capacities of the affected States and, as such, will be difficult, if not impossible, for frontline States to implement. The primary argument of this article is that the mechanisms of the New Pact that are intended to contain the arrival of migrants and to level the imbalances caused by the geographical location of the EU Member states with external borders will actually allow the derogation of migrants’ rights and will hardly compensate for the special circumstances faced by frontline EU States. Instead of balancing the burdens of migration among Member States, the weight will be disproportionately borne by the very States the legislations propose to relieve.