EU: New Pact on Migration and Asylum by Judith Bergman  •  November 28, 2020 at 5:00 am       The question at the core of the internal EU conflict over migration in Europe is not practical but political: whether the EU should take any migrants at all. On that question, the European Commission and the Central and Eastern European countries could not be further apart. The proposed system invariably gives rise to multiple questions about the practical viability of the proposed system. Will frontline states become efficient at screening migrants? Will the planned increased border control work? How, exactly, are widespread, years-long people-smuggling and human trafficking by gangs who profit immensely from it, going to be stopped? "The big gamble is that you are betting on all members states each living up to their part of the responsibility.... it only takes a few states not living up [to] their commitments and then the entire system breaks down." — Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, professor of migration and refugee law at the University of Copenhagen, euronews.com, October 8, 2020. "[W]e must ensure that the external borders of the EU and the Schengen Area remain perfectly sealed along all sections... Though it appears under a different name in the European Commission's new package of proposals on migration and asylum, the migrant quota is still there, and Hungary opposes it, along with Poland and the Czech Republic." — Zoltan Kovacs, Hungary's Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations. According to Zoltan Kovacs, Hungary's Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations, "Though it appears under a different name in the European Commission's new package of proposals on migration and asylum, the migrant quota is still there, and Hungary opposes it, along with Poland and the Czech Republic." (Photo by Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images) The European Commission has proposed a new Pact on Migration and Asylum for the European Union in the hope that it will solve the deep-seated political crisis that the issue of migration continues to pose in the EU. The European Union remains fundamentally divided over the question of migration into the continent and has been so for years. During the 2015 migration crisis, when EU leaders agreed to relocate 160,000 migrants and refugees from camps in Italy and Greece, assigning each EU member state a fixed quota, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic refused to receive migrants. The refusal prompted the European Commission, in 2017, to start proceedings against the three countries at the Court of Justice of the European Union. In April 2020, the Court ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had broken EU law by refusing to participate in the EU's relocation agreement. Continue Reading Article