Pre-Screening at the Border in the Asylum and Migration Pact: A Paradigm Shift for Asylum, Return and Detention Policies?

Abstract

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum1 announced by the European Commission on 23 of September 2020 contains a new piece of legislation: a Proposal for a Regulation introducing a screening of third country nationals at the external borders and amending some related regulations2 (hereafter Proposal for a Screening Regulation, Proposal). From the first outlook it seems that a novelty – a pre-entry screening – procedure is introduced. A more thorough analysis raises several questions. Firstly, is this novelty really new, and if not, is it worthwhile investing almost 0.5 billion euros in re-decorating old practices that did not work? Second, will the measures proposed be adequate to address the challenges and meet the objectives indicated, or will they raise more legal and practical issues than the existing ones? Last, but not least, how realistic are such provisions to be implemented once adopted?