One year on from the EU’s Asylum and Migration Pact: Critical reflections
By Dr Romit Bhandari (UEL) and Prof. Michael J. Geary (NTNU)
On 10 April 2025, the University of East London hosted the international workshop, One Year on from the EU’s Asylum and Migration Pact: Critical Reflections. Organised under the auspices of HIDDEN’s Working Group 3 (Accessing Citizenship), it brought together academics, NGO representatives, practitioners, and activists from 12 different countries to analyse the important next phase in the EU’s Migration and Asylum Policy. This blog post outlines some of the fascinating discussions that took place and many of the themes that the workshop focused on.
Panel 1: EU’s Asylum Management, Politics and Solidarity
The first panel, the “EU’s Asylum Management, Politics and Solidarity” discussed the EU’s evolving identity, from merely producing legislation for member states into actively managing its asylum policies. Romit Bhandari delivered an opening talk to highlight the Pact’s main policy objectives and their prospects for implementation. Despite being billed as a ‘fresh start’, the retention of the first country of entry criterion means that the same structural flaws from prior visions of the Common European Asylum System are likely to plague the Pact. The main innovation in asylum management comes in form of the solidarity mechanism. The panel did well to highlight the contrast between member state solidarity and solidarity with asylum seekers. Cameron Nye (European Network on Statelessness) demonstrated that the invisibility of provisions catering for stateless persons within the reforms, despite the significant practical vulnerabilities this poses with no states willing to readmit them. Adam Labaran (UREP) delivered a moving speech detailing his lived experience of detention and issued a call to prioritise their humanity over the safety of borders. Aron Bosman (Fenix Humanitarian Legal Aid) discussed his experience of working with asylum seekers on the Greek Island of Lesvos and predicted that the Pact is likely to result in de facto detention and will likely undermine the ability to deal with applicants on an individual basis.
Panel 2: Technology, Control, and Efficiency
The second panel turned attention to the increasing deployment of technology within EU migration governance. Keren Weitzberg (Queen Mary) and Hanna Stoll (University of Zurich) produced a compelling comparison of the different contexts of the EURODAC and the proposed EU Digital Wallet. The former is built upon the logic of securitisation and criminalisation, with data protection rights and consent conspicuous in their absence, while the latter aims to challenge Silicone Valley alternatives (Google/Apple Wallets). These differences reinforce the hierarchies of citizenship and belonging. Elif A. Korkut (Queen Mary) discussed how the Screening Regulation, positioned as a pre-asylum filtering mechanism, risks silently excluding asylum seekers through risk profiling before they can properly access protection procedures. AI technologies, she warned, reinforce structures of suspicion, control, and exclusion at Europe’s borders. Annalisa Meloni (UEL) closed the panel with a nuanced analysis of the evolving role of visa policy and the shift towards an EU-wide, data-driven visa policy. While harmonisation and interoperability promise fairness and efficiency, they often overlook the human rights implications of automation and may contribute towards externalisation of migration control. Collectively, the panel underscored how digitalisation, far from neutral, can deepen existing forms of exclusion within the EU’s asylum regime.
Panel 3: Europe’s Borders Beyond Europe
While Panels 1 and 2 had thus far looked introspectively within the EU, Panel 3 shifted the focus to external cooperation with third countries. Giorgia Donà (UEL) argued that third countries are testing grounds for new, repressive technologies. Using postcolonial theory, she highlighted how crisis and emergency have been used in colonial eras and warned of their presence within the Pact. Ermioni Xanthopoulou (Brunel) comprehensively catalogued the EU’s diverse practices of externalisation, illustrating how arrangements built upon politics, informalisation and soft law can conflict with the cornerstones of refugee law. Rozita Dimova (Sts. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje), reflected upon her fieldwork in North Macedonia to the current effects of EU policy.
Panel 4: Fundamental Rights and Compliance
The final Panel 4 turned to the cross-cutting theme of the protection of fundamental rights, a concern shared by all panels up to this point. In a tremendously engaging opening, Joyce De Coninck (EUI/Ghent) asking whether, being stranded at sea, one’s first thoughts would be on survival or whether one would think to take evidence of their location for the purposes of a legal case. This reflected some of the absurdities in the burden of proof that asylum seekers face before the courts, ending with a call to redistribute this burden more equitably amongst both parties. Salvatore Nicolosi (Utrecht) critically examined the role of the EU Agency for Asylum in implementing asylum policy and how it might undermine fundamental rights. Dilahan Bice Kurtoglu (Warwick) drew upon her fieldwork in Greece to show that although legal representation is notionally safeguarded within the Pact, several NGOs have cast doubt that this can be conducted faithfully in practice. Giulia Raimondo (Fribourg) built upon her path-breaking book on Frontex to discuss the legal loopholes in holding the organisation responsible for human rights violations at Europe’s borders. Pedro Martins (Autonomous University of Barcelona) closed with a moving critique of how the Pact threatens the safety of SOGIESC asylum seekers.
Looking Ahead
The workshop concluded with a discussion of dissemination strategies and reflections on the urgent need to bridge academic, policy and activist spaces within the wider discussion on the implementation and evaluation of the Migration and Asylum Pact. The event reaffirmed the value of interdisciplinary, rights-based critique—especially as the EU continues to consolidate its migration policies under the banner of efficiency, digitalisation, and control. We look forward to the next steps, in terms of academic publications, policy recommendations and media stories – in the hope that these lessons are not only heard within universities, but across civil society, policy spaces, the public and migrant communities.
