The new solidarity mechanism aims to address the challenges of migration and asylum in Europe, but will it achieve the necessary balance?

The Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (EU) 2024/1351 (hereafter AMMR) has superseded the Dublin III Regulation on June 12. As argued elsewhere, its provisions on responsibility allocation and secondary movements may exacerbate, rather than alleviate, distributive imbalances in the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Indeed, recent EU policy documents stress that the Pact has created new gatekeeping tasks for ‘Member States of first entry’, and that the permanent solidarity mechanism is meant to support ‘notably these Member States’, ‘balancing’ their new challenges and responsibilities.

In the hopes of the EU legislator, the new solidarity mechanism has, indeed, wider significance for the CEAS: it should generate and sustain a virtuous circle (see recitals 2 and 3). The promise of predictable and significant solidarity should convince the first line States to embrace fully their (increased) responsibilities, and put an end to evasion measures such as the rather spectacular suspension of Dublin transfers by Italy. This should, in turn, reassure ‘inland’ States wary of secondary movements, and allow them to fully embrace solidarity, sustaining the virtuous circle – in a nutshell, more solidarity for more responsibility, and the removal of the incentives to violate EU Law that have so undermined it on the ground. Of course, this can only work if the solidarity mechanism is indeed credible and predictable in the first place.

The new mechanism is built on a difficult compromise between Member States having fundamentally divergent interests and outlooks on the common asylum policy. Meant to be ‘mandatory’ and ‘flexible’ (see recital 22), it should provide a ‘predictable’ insurance scheme to Member States under migratory pressure (see recitals 15 and 33), while providing acceptable options to all Member States, including those having the most vocally objected to certain forms of solidarity, particularly relocations.

⚖️ Impact on Migrants & Refugees

This mechanism affects how responsibilities are distributed among member states, impacting the lives of migrants and refugees in Europe.

Translated & Prepared by: Policy Desk | AboMatrix