Sílvia Morgades Gil: "The EU will have spaces at the border where the fiction will be created that migrants are not in Europe"

BarcelonaDuring the Spanish rotating presidency, the Twenty-Seven approved the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and two years after its approval, on June 12, the transition period for states to adapt to it expires. From this date, the agreement will be fully in force throughout the European Union. The text stipulates that the irregular entry of non-EU persons must be avoided and facilitates the return of all those who do not have the right to request official protection. For human rights organizations, this is an initiative that advances towards the necropolitics of borders. In other words, betting everything on control and a hard line in reception. Sílvia Morgades, an associate professor of public international law and international relations at UPF, has thoroughly studied what this process will entail.

Is the objective of the European agreement to curb irregular immigration?

— The pillars of this pact are three. First, border control. In the European Union, groups of people are created who are in an irregular situation, either because they have entered irregularly or because they have not found a way to regularize their situation. Furthermore, countries are incapable of expelling these people, because the countries of origin often do not cooperate, because they cannot be identified, or directly because they are irretrievable. The aim is to prevent these groups from becoming larger and larger, and therefore, the entry of immigrants is to be contained, or at least discouraged.

The other two legs?

— Another is the regulation on the instrumentalization of immigration, which, in my opinion, is the most dangerous, because it allows states that warn of the instrumentalization of immigrants to make exceptions to their rights. Honestly, I hope it is never applied, because if it is applied, we would have a problem.

What concerns you? Provide an example.

— Exceptions to granting asylum. For example, if Greece considers that Turkey threatens not to contain within its territory the immigration heading towards Europe, Greece could ask the European Commission to exempt it from its obligation to take in asylum seekers.

And the third?

— The famous Dublin Regulation, which is no longer called that, but which continues to be in force in its style and basic rules, although it represents a certain improvement. It is the first time that in the mandatory legislation of the European Union, as it is a regulation, solidarity mechanisms are established between the member states, so that there is a distribution of asylum seekers. I think this aspect is worth highlighting. In other words, not everything is repressive, but there are also elements that allow for a certain hope that things can get better.

So, what will change from this June 12th at the borders of the European Union?

— The Pact speaks of creating spaces at the Union's border points to carry out a rapid triage of non-EU nationals arriving to determine if they are entitled to asylum. These triageswill be carried out in spaces where the fiction will be created that they are not on European territory. In this way, theoretically these people will not have set foot on EU territory, they will never have entered.

Are they non-spaces?

— They are spaces where it is invented that the European Union has not been entered, to generate international zones. We do not know what they will be like, but jurisprudence has already said that they are fictions. We will have to see if in these spaces the rights of the European Convention, of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, will apply. For the moment, no protocols or ways of acting have been published, but, in truth, I cannot imagine how it will be done in Barcelona.

Why?

— I don't know where they will create these spaces in which for days and under various conditions these people will gather, whether in the CIE of Zona Franca or at Prat airport.

Does the Pact prohibit new extraordinary regularizations like those Spain is doing?

— No, irregular immigration that is already within the member states, which maintain sovereignty on this issue, is also not affected. For example, Spain has the figure of "arraigo" to regularize foreigners living there.