Almost a decade in the making, the EU’s new migration and asylum pact suffered so many setbacks, stalemates and rewrites that when member states finally announced a deal last year, its passage through parliament seemed assured.
That was, however, to ignore the objections of Europe’s resurgent far-right parties, who felt it was not tough enough (and, perhaps, hoped to profit at the ballot box from allowing the current chaos around migration to continue).
The far left objected too, on the grounds that the package of 10 different bills was too tough, marking the abandonment of European values of compassion and human dignity, a surrender to the far right, and a major blow to human rights.
More than 160 rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Rescue Committee, also denounced the pact, arguing it would lead to greater suffering, less protection and more rights violations.
Devised after Europe’s 2015 migration crisis which saw 1.3 million people – mostly Syrian refugees – cross into the bloc, the pact establishes border centres to hold people while asylum requests are vetted and speed up any deportations. In the name of European solidarity, it also requires EU member states to either take in thousands of asylum seekers from frontline states such as Italy and Greece, or provide money or other resources to the most under-pressure nations.
Particularly controversial measures include sending asylum seekers to countries outside the EU that are deemed “safe”, if a person has some ties to that country, and taking facial images and fingerprints from children as young as six.
Politics also got in the way: even though the parliament’s three main groups – the centre-right EPP, centre-left S&D and liberal Renew – backed the deal, some national party delegations, unwilling to vote with domestic political opponents, pledged to block it.
Less than two months before the European parliament elections in June that are widely forecast to produce a surge in support for radical-right parties, the pro-EU political centre portrayed the pact as proof of its viability against the far right. But by the time the package came to the vote on Wednesday, there were mounting concerns in Brussels and many other EU capitals that opposition was so strong MEPs would reject at least some parts of it, resulting in the failure of the whole.
In the end, every element passed, to the undisguised relief of the mainstream groups – many of whose MEPs had confessed to personal misgivings about some of the harsher measures in the pact, but backed it as an overall improvement.
With more than 46,000 people entering the EU via irregular migration routes so far this year alone, and an estimated 400 dying while doing so, some kind of new collective plan was desperately needed to replace a decade of go-it-alone responses.
Whether this one will work is another matter. Hungary and Poland were swift to say they would not accept relocations under the new solidarity rules, while far-right, far-left and Green parties, and NGOs, have pledged – for different reasons – to fight on.
Experts, too, have expressed grave doubts about how the pact will function, pointing out that the new system, while based on shared responsibilities, would be infinitely more complex – and not all member states would be inclined to put in the effort.
For the time being, though, Europe’s centre can savour a victory – of sorts. “We have an obligation to the citizens of Europe to show that Europe can actually work, that it can deliver,” the veteran Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld said before the vote.
There were clearly “very justified doubts and concerns about this package”, she said, adding: “Everything will hinge on implementation.”
As if to underline her words, on Wednesday rescuers recovered the bodies of three girls off the Greek island of Chios. The trio died after a boat carrying migrants from nearby Turkey ran into rocks. Fourteen people, including eight other children, were rescued. Coastguard officials said three patrol vessels were looking for other possible survivors.
