The European Union was poised on Thursday, September 28, to agree to new rules for handling asylum-seekers and irregular migrants after Germany said it would go along with the intensely-negotiated package.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said "no main obstacles" remained on the thorny issue after a meeting of the bloc's interior ministers. A formal agreement would come "in a few days," she said.
Once implemented, the EU's new Pact on Migration and Asylum would seek to relieve the pressure on so-called frontline countries such as Italy and Greece by relocating some arrivals to other EU countries. Those countries opposed to hosting asylum-seekers, Poland and Hungary being among them, would be required to pay the ones that do take migrants in.
At the same time, the EU would seek to speed up the processing of asylum applications so that migrants deemed inadmissible are returned to their country of origin or of transit, and maximum detention times for migrants in border centers would be lengthened from the current 12 weeks.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said her country won concessions allowing it to back the deal finally, after initially abstaining on an earlier draft it considered too harsh for some categories of migrants. She said that only Poland and Hungary opposed the compromise text in the Brussels meeting, so "we, therefore, assume that this political agreement is valid."
Faeser said that changes made to get German assent included ensuring families and children were "prioritized" when they arrived irregularly on EU soil and admission criteria for asylum-seekers were not tightened. Also, "the concept of instrumentalization was defined more narrowly," Faeser said.
That appeared to refer to efforts by Italy's right-wing government to treat charity ships conducting migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean similarly to people-smugglers or to countries such as Belarus that have pushed migration flows toward Europe as a tactic.
Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Tajani said in Berlin that his country needed more time to study the latest text. Speaking after chairing the Brussels meeting, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska stressed that "a very broad majority of member states" agreed with the compromise approach.
While "nuances" still needed to be hammered out, he vowed that a final agreement would be reached "within the next few days," adding: "We are almost at the finishing line."
Paralysis on the issue has caused growing frustration in the bloc as it faces a rise in irregular migration. Thousands of asylum-seekers arriving from Africa on the Italian island of Lampedusa spurred urgency to get the revised policy in place.
Part of the aim of the revised policy is for EU countries to act together should they be faced with a sudden large inflow of asylum-seekers, as happened in 2015-2016 when hundreds of thousands of migrants arrived, most of them Syrians fleeing the war in their country.
Agreement among EU member states needs a weighted majority of countries to vote in favor, meaning countries opposing the host-or-pay clause, Poland, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic, would likely not have enough support to block it.
In Budapest, Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, heaped fresh criticism on the migration pact. "All they can achieve with this migration pact is to turn the border countries, countries along the Schengen border into Lampedusa," he said.
The European Parliament added its pressure on the ministers by deciding last week to pause negotiations with EU member states on aspects of the pact that had met little resistance, those dealing with reinforced security along the bloc's outer border.
The goal of the EU is to have the reform made law before the European elections next year, which will usher in a new European Parliament and Commission.
The next cycle in EU politics could see a political shift in the European Parliament, given the rise of right-wing parties in several EU countries, and would see Hungary and Poland take turns holding the rotating EU presidency.