The EU's new migration pact, which comes into force on Friday, is designed to toughen border control to avoid asylum seekers travelling between states, MEPs said on Wednesday.
After more than a decade of negotiations, Brussels is implementing sweeping new procedures aimed at addressing public discontent over migration. These include expanding the fingerprint database Eurodac to incorporate facial-recognition data and travel documents.
This comes after Belfast was engulfed by a night of riots following a knife attack involving a Sudanese man charged with attempted murder. The suspect crossed the Irish border in February 2023, having flown to Dublin from Paris before entering Northern Ireland by bus and claiming asylum in the UK.
“The aim of Eurodac is to respond appropriately to situations like the one we've seen in Belfast,” said far-right Spanish MEP Jorge Buxade Villalba, responding to a question from The National.
Speaking in Brussels at a joint press conference with other MEPs to present the migration pact, Mr Villalba said there was currently no co-ordination between states to process asylum requests. New files are created for each request, allowing asylum seekers to lodge a new demand in a different EU state if the first application fails.
“With Eurodac, we're going to see that co-ordination, which means that the Irish authorities will be able to keep track of the movements, and then proceed to deportation, which is the ultimate aim of what we're trying to do here – protecting Europe's external borders,” Mr Villalba said.
Deportation is a weak point of EU migration rules. Only 28 per cent of rejected asylum seekers travel back to their country of origin, which needs to accept their return. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece and Austria, want to set up return centres in Eastern Europe or Africa, but details have yet to be announced.
The Belfast attack led to a heated debate in the House of Commons, with Northern Irish unionist MP Jim Allister demanding more information about the Sudanese suspect's visa status in the UK. The UK left the EU in 2020 but shares a border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.
“What I want to know, and what I know that my constituents want to hear, is what will be done to stop the importation of an alien culture that thinks it is appropriate to try to behead someone within the UK,” Mr Allister said.
The UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, responded by criticising Mr Allister's use of the words “alien culture” and said the police would provide more information.
There is a “live conversation” among ministers to ensure the common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland is “not used as a back route for people to come here and exploit our asylum system”, cabinet minister Anna Turley said on Wednesday.
In Brussels, socialist MEP Birgit Sippel cautioned against accusing all migrants of being criminals. Irregular arrivals to the EU fell by 26 per cent last year to their lowest level since 2021.
“I do understand concerns if an attack is happening, but these are always individual cases, and we cannot say that, therefore, all migrants are dangerous, and they should leave,” Ms Sippel said.
“Having said this, the idea of the new pact is that everybody arriving irregularly will be screened and information put into Eurodac,” she added.
