European leaders are tightening asylum rules and seeking to restrict migration under political pressure from opponents who charge that Europe’s mainstream parties have lost control of the numbers of people who are coming into the bloc.
European Union member states and lawmakers agreed on new asylum rules Wednesday after years of failing to rework a system that collapsed during the migration crisis of 2015. Back then, over one million people came to the bloc, swelling support for far-right parties.
Hours earlier, on Tuesday, the French parliament backed an immigration bill that increases the government’s power to deport foreigners and limits access to welfare and citizenship to dissuade asylum seekers from coming.
Britain recently passed preliminary legislation aimed at permitting the deportation of failed asylum seekers to Rwanda, while even in Germany—a country long open to migrants—officials are working on plans to send some asylum seekers to Africa while their cases are decided.
Europe’s tightening laws on asylum and migration face criticism from nongovernmental organizations who say they will inflict more pain on people escaping wars and poverty. Potentially more troubling for officials, some experts say the measures being designed will fail to achieve their central aim: a clear reduction in the number of asylum seekers reaching Europe.
While European governments have grappled for years with migration rules, the political imperative for action has recently increased. Authorities say the number of asylum claims in Europe could top one million this year, the highest level since the 2015 crisis.
Just as border control is set to be a pivotal issue in the U.S. presidential elections next year, migration is likely to play a leading role in EU-wide European Parliament elections in June.
In Dutch elections last month, far-right, anti-migrant politician Geert Wilders emerged as the clear winner, sending shock waves across the continent. It was his first victory after almost two decades of trying.
In Germany, the right-wing, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party is ranking second in opinion polls, with record-high support. France’s National Rally anti-immigration party, led by Marine Le Pen, is also topping domestic opinion surveys.
At the heart of the new EU legislation is an effort to accelerate the screening of asylum seekers to allow swifter deportations of failed claimants, with greater powers for authorities to keep people inside migration centers in front-line states, such as Italy, until they are either rejected or relocated to elsewhere in the bloc.
That could reduce the large number of asylum seekers who flock to richer countries including the Netherlands and Germany. In return, northern countries would accept some relocated asylum seekers or would pay into a joint EU fund to manage migration. The new rules still require formal approval in the European Parliament and in the EU grouping of member states.
The EU is also seeking to sign migration agreements with countries like Tunisia and Albania to boost its ability to return failed asylum seekers, though the pacts are proving cumbersome to seal.
“This Pact on Migration and Asylum will ensure that there is an effective European response to this European challenge," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who oversees the bloc’s executive arm. “It means that Europeans will decide who comes to the EU and who can stay, not the smugglers. It means protecting those in need."
The EU agreement comes after lawmakers in both of France’s parliamentary chambers on Tuesday clinched a last-minute migration deal.
The bill, which is deeply divisive within President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party, empowers the government to expel foreign residents who reject the values of the French Republic. It tightens access to children’s and housing benefits for foreign residents living legally in France and raises the French-language requirement for residency permits. Children born in France to foreign parents will no longer be automatically granted citizenship.
Dozens of lawmakers from Macron’s party and its allies voted against the bill or abstained from voting. On Wednesday, hours after the vote, French Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau tendered his resignation.
After the bill was passed, Le Pen framed the bill as a “great ideological victory" for her National Rally party. Le Pen said the new bill gives priority to French nationals over foreigners—an idea she has long defended—by tightening access to welfare.
Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said the EU agreement would cause “a surge in suffering on every step of a person’s journey to seek asylum in the EU."
“The pact will almost certainly cause more people to be put into de facto detention at EU borders, including families with children and people in vulnerable situations," she said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whose coalition partner, the Green Party, was divided over the reforms, backed the compromise, though she acknowledged that Berlin had failed to win exemptions preventing children or families being kept in border centers.
“The agreement on a new asylum system was urgent, necessary and long overdue," she said on X, the former Twitter.
There are questions about whether the changes being adopted across Europe will succeed.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faced a rebellion within his Conservative Party over the Rwanda plans after his immigration minister quit the cabinet, saying the proposal wouldn’t succeed in allowing the government to deport people. Many officials say there is little evidence that broad efforts by European governments to reduce welfare benefits for asylum seekers has succeeded in reducing their appetite to come.
Gerald Knaus, a migration expert and the founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative, a think tank that focuses on asylum policy and human rights, said that no real problem will be solved by the rework of EU rules.
“The key problem—the failure to return even those who never apply for asylum or are rejected—from Italy, Spain, Germany or France—is not addressed," he said. “This means that…the status quo of thousands drowning every year, no humane control and continuing illegal pushbacks will likely continue, including next spring, leading up to the European elections."
In October, the EU Agency for Asylum said that 123,000 new asylum applications were received in the bloc and neighboring countries, marking, for the second month running, the highest levels since the 2015 refugee crisis. The agency predicted that there would be more than one million claimants arriving this year. Germany remained the number-one destination for asylum seekers, receiving around a quarter of the total claims made.
Over a million people in Europe are awaiting a decision on their claims.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com
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