This paper examines the EU’s New Pact for Migration and Asylum, addressing concerns about its potential to exacerbate human suffering at EU borders through increased detention. It critically analyzes the Pact’s pre-entry border procedures, focusing on the legal framework for detaining asylum seekers and the provisions’ impact on the right to liberty. To understand whether the procedures risk proliferating unlawful de facto detention, the paper assesses both the new legislation as well as current practices of de facto detention under the so-called hotspot approach on the Greek island of Samos, which served as a blueprint for the Pact. The findings reveal that the new procedures significantly expand the legal and practical possibilities for detaining asylum seekers during screening, asylum border, and return border procedures, risking to render the detention of asylum seekers at the external border the default. Thereby, the provisions contravene the right to liberty enshrined in human rights law in manifold ways. Moreover, by expanding the possibilities for EU countries to impose mobility restrictions, the procedures severely exacerbate the risk for unlawful de facto detention, as the practice of mobility restrictions in places like Samos shows. Rather than representing a shift in EU migratory policies, the paper demonstrates how the Pact replicates and extends existing practices of (unlawfully) detaining asylum seekers under the hotspot approach. The paper argues that these provisions enhance detention capacities to restrict asylum seekers’ mobility and facilitate deportations, aligning predominantly with the Northern EU states’ priorities to curb ‘secondary’
migration.
(2025-07) Paul, Noa; Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament de Ciències Polítiques i Socials
