The New Pact on Migration and Asylum and the recommendations of the EU Commission on legal pathways to protection in the European Union

By Tihomir Sabchev

Source: Sebastien Bertrand through Flickr

At the end of September 2020, the European Commission adopted its New Pact on Migration and Asylum. Among other objectives, the Pact aims at promoting sustainable and safe legal pathways for people in need of international protection. This blog outlines the main aspects of the Commission’s recommendations in this regard. 

It should be noted from the very beginning, that each Member State has the right to determine the volume of admission for people from third countries. In other words, the Commission cannot oblige Member States to admit people in need of international protection, but it can only try to influence their decisions through recommendations, funding, capacity building, coordination of existing efforts, etc. On the basis such soft instruments, the Commission included in the recently published Pact its “Recommendations on Legal Pathways to Protection in the EU”, focusing on the promotion of three main channels of admission of people in need of protection: resettlement, humanitarian admission and complementary pathways. 
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