By Tamas ORBAN Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su A quick explainer on the EU’s landmark migration management legislation and why the European Right is not happy about it. After nearly eleven years in the making, the EU’s flagship asylum and migration management legislation, commonly called the Migration Pact , entered into force on June 12th. Implementing the law is now mandatory for all EU countries (except for some provisions in the case of Denmark, which has a broader opt-out from common EU home affairs legislation).
The main objective of the Pact was to introduce a single, harmonized asylum procedure that would ensure that refugees get the exact same treatment, regardless of which member state they apply to for asylum, as well as to make both entry and return procedures more streamlined. The EU Commission is celebrating this milestone as something that will finally solve all of Europe’s migration woes and put the decade-old conflict about border control and illegal entries to rest.
But that’s just wishful thinking, as national conservative parties across Europe have never accepted the Pact and will keep on fighting against its implementation for the foreseeable future. Their criticism targets not only the so-called solidarity mechanism and its mandatory migrant relocation quotas but also the fact that the Pact fails to strengthen external borders and prevent illegal entries in any meaningful way; in fact, it forces member states to allow more migrants in.
“The Pact does not stop illegal migration. It administers it,” the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group wrote in their statement . “It is an open invitation, and it will not ease the pressure on Europe; it will multiply it.” Defending a nation’s borders is not a crime and should not be punished with fines. For that reason, the Patriots reject the EU Migration Pact. pic.twitter.com/sAAupllkW4 — Patriots for Europe (@PatriotsEP) June 12, 2026 With twelve separate pieces of legislation and hundreds of provisions being introduced at once, it’s not easy to see what’s actually changing and why nationalist parties are up in arms again. To explain why, here’s a quick summary of the most important parts and why some consider them problematic. 1. Border procedure: too narrow and too selective Before the Pact, one major point of conflict was that member states weren’t technically allowed to detain refugees with pending asylum applications at the border. In most cases, this led to authorities being completely unable to locate and deport them if their claims had been rejected months later, so the illegal migrants were allowed to roam freely within the EU, indefinitely. And when one country (Hungary) didn’t allow migrants to enter before their asylum had been granted, the Commission imposed a fine of hundreds of millions of euros on the country.
Now, in response to many countries demanding a change in the rule, the Commission did grant a concession in the form of a separate, fast-tracked asylum protocol, called the “border procedure,” which does allow member states to hold asylum seekers in refugee centers and designated zones at the border, provided that all their needs are met. It sounds good on paper, but reality is much more disappointing.
First, the border procedure cannot be applied to all migrants, far from it. In fact, it only applies to three distinct categories: those who are proven to be intentionally trying to mislead authorities about their identities; those who present a risk to public order or national security; and those who arrive from countries with a historically low asylum approval rate (less than 20%).
Even among these people, the border procedure cannot be applied to minors or anyone with any health (including mental health) conditions. They will all have to be allowed inside the EU and put into the normal asylum procedure, along with everyone else not covered by these categories. And the cherry on top is that if authorities were to exceed the border procedures’ allotted 12-week deadline, migrants held at the border automatically revert to normal asylum procedure and are free to move about inside the country. 2. Returns and safe third countries: not nearly enough Since the border procedure was meant to be the answer to the EU’s abysmal return rates (less than one in five failed asylum seekers are actually deported), we can already see why there won’t be any big difference in this regard.
Most migrants are still allowed to just disappear, so authorities will continue to struggle with enforcing deportation orders. While the new Pact does prohibit secondary movements between member states without a positive asylum ruling and directs national authorities to transport migrants back to the first country where they entered the EU if they are caught somewhere else, historical data show that most will never be found.
The Pact also introduces an updated list of “safe countries of origin”—migrants from these can be automatically denied asylum—including Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco, and Tunisia. A second list includes “safe third countries,” where migrants can be returned if their countries of origin are not safe but they still get rejected, provided they have a personal connection to the place (like family living there) or transited through it while en route to Europe.
While this is a step in the right direction and can make deportations easier on paper, the problem is that member states have no authority in deciding what constitutes a safe third country—only the Commission does—and there are still too many bureaucratic hurdles that have to be cleared in each case individually. And if you can’t finish a return procedure in 12 weeks, migrants are again free to do as they please. 3. “Adequate” living standards and other taxpayer costs Under the Reception Conditions Directive, member states are now obliged to provide refugees with “an adequate standard of living and comparable living conditions in all member states.” In practice, this means refugees arriving in Bulgaria should be treated the same as those in Germany, precisely “to limit secondary movements”—taking away the incentive for migrants to travel to wealthier member states. This is good for Germans, Dutch, and Swedes, but not as much for countries with dramatically lower GDP per capita, who will have to provide better living standards than what many of their own citizens have.
The directive further specifies these “conditions” to cover housing, food, clothing, hygiene and healthcare products, and most importantly, cash. The pact explicitly states that member states must provide the same type and comparable levels of financial assistance—such as social assistance benefits—that citizens get.
What’s more, the Pact dictates that all refugees must be provided free language and integration courses (again, to limit secondary movements), as well as free legal counsel throughout the entire asylum process. 4. Solidarity mechanism: open your gates or pay up The solidarity mechanism was without a doubt the most controversial aspect of the whole Pact, which could only be adopted once the Council tweaked the rules and removed the unanimity requirement from the vote. Meaning 20 “yes”-es were enough to insert it into the Pact and make it applicable to the whole EU.
In a nutshell, the solidarity mechanism is meant to ease the pressure on frontline countries (such as Spain, Italy, or Greece) by redistributing refugees among the 27 member states. The annual quota for each country is determined by their relative size and GDP. Countries, in turn, can choose to accept their share or pay €20,000 per migrant into a common fund meant to help frontline countries with accommodation and processing of migrants.
It’s not an inherently bad concept, considering that some countries do have to admit a lot more refugees than others and could do with a little solidarity. However, others argue that the mechanism is still a major infringement on their sovereignty and the whole thing could be avoided if Brussels just let frontline countries close their borders to illegal migrants as well.
Also, the main problem with the mechanism is that once it’s implemented, there’s no telling where this train will take us. Initially, the Pact only mandates the relocation of 30,000 migrants per year, which doesn’t seem that much. However, there’s a catch: the Commission can freely increase that number every year at will, without member states having any say in it. Many suspect this figure was just a Trojan horse, meant to get enough countries aboard before the Commission would reveal its real intentions.
Furthermore, things can change significantly in times of crises, when unforeseen circumstances, like a civil war, lead to a sudden increase in migrant arrivals. The crisis regulation allows the Commission to immediately increase relocation and financial contribution quotas (outside the regular yearly review) and change other rules of the solidarity mechanism as well.
For instance, the regulation introduces a concept called “mandatory responsibility offsets.” This means that a contributing member state does not necessarily relocate more migrants than its fair share but only takes over the responsibility for their asylum procedure so the country in need can process claims faster. Additional voluntary relocation pledges are still preferred and encouraged. 5. “Legal and safe” pathways: normalizing migration A lesser-known regulation within the Pact is called the Union Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Framework, which was established to provide “legal and safe” ways to immigrate to Europe with international protection by essentially helping people apply for asylum and then transporting them to the EU straight from their countries of origin.
The idea here is to limit the number of migrants taken advantage of by people smugglers or who lose their lives at sea, which is rational. But it also means creating offices and essentially advertising the possibility across the world, especially in countries with a “large number of persons in need of international protection.” There’s a very real concern here that many people will try to take advantage of this program, and at least some of them will not get filtered out through the screening procedure.
Combine this with the EU’s so-called Talent Pool , another initiative that is separate from the Pact and will focus on attracting as much labor migration as possible from the third world, and it’s clear that Brussels’ goal was never to reduce mass migration but to increase it in a consistent and bureaucratic way. Original article: europeanconservative.com