The new Eurodac database — the “digital backbone” of the pact, according to one Commission official, granted anonymity to speak freely, as were others in this piece — will be used to register asylum seekers’ information, such as travel documents and fingerprints, which will allow their movements to be tracked.
… and more solidarity
The rules also mean support for EU countries that receive the most migrants. That support could take the form of cash, the relocation of migrants from one country to another, or other assistance.
Under the first attempt at this so-called “solidarity pool,” countries set targets to either take 21,000 migrants from Italy, Spain, Greece and Cyprus or pay €420 million to those countries — or some combination of the two.
This is a particularly tricky part of the deal. Several countries ruled out taking any migrants — even as countries such as Cyprus stressed that this was essential. Hungary and Slovakia pledged neither financial support nor help in taking migrants.
But Commission, Council and Parliament officials stressed that the mechanism was still a big leap forward, with one Commission official saying that the pact had allowed countries to “overcome mistrust.”
It’s a fragile balance
Solidarity is a scarce resource when it comes to migration policy. For it to hold up, the various parts of the pact have to click, said Lukas Gehrke, director of the International Organization for Migration’s office in Brussels. “If the border procedure does what it’s supposed to do, then secondary movements over some time could indeed be lower, and then the solidarity mechanism might have the breathing space to actually work,” he said.