The EU's new migration pact, which enters 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. It includes the expansion of a fingerprint database named Eurodac to include facial recognition 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 it fails in the first.
“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, with only 28 per cent of rejected asylum seekers travelling back to their country of origin which need to accept their return. Some countries like 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 incident led to a heated debate in the Commons with hardline 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 EU-member Republic of Ireland.
“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, a Northern Irish politician, said.
UK Secretary of State to 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 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 Sipple cautioned against accusing all migrants of being criminals. Irregular arrivals to the EU fell 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 Sipple 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.
