Athens, 18 December 2023

The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is at dire risk of dismantlement in view of today’s ‘trilogue’ between EU legislators on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum.

Through the CEAS reform, the European Union seeks again to restrict rules on asylum procedures while main responsibility will continue to lie with border countries, including Greece. The reform is liable to lead to backsliding of minimum standards at borders and to a dismantling of protection in Greece.

As negotiations enter the finish line with a view to a political agreement on the various legal instruments of the Pact before the end of the year, the European Parliament has conceded ground to the Council on all major elements of the reform and is likely to agree, among others, on:

The expansion of the “safe third country” concept as a ground for dismissing asylum claims without an assessment on the merits, namely through watered-down criteria on the safety of third countries and through a safety presumption based on the sole existence of a readmission agreement with the EU.

The mandatory channelling of a large number of asylum seekers into border procedures under conditions of mass, arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

The codification of the concept of “instrumentalisation of migrants” in EU law, through which Member States will invoke broad, arbitrary derogations from their legal obligations at will.

The Council of the European Union has insisted on its positions without making actual compromise in exchange for MEPs’ concessions. The Parliament proposal for free legal assistance and representation in first instance asylum procedures, seen as the only trade-off to the severe weakening of procedural safeguards, has been downgraded in negotiations to provision of mere information to applicants in the form of “legal counselling”. Such a provision already exists in the current Asylum Procedures Directive as provision of “legal and procedural information”.