12 States Lack EU Migration Capacity

Nine days from now, on June 12, the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact becomes binding law in all 27 member states. It is not one reform but ten regulations, negotiated over years, covering the route from arrival to possible deportation. For the first time, the EU will have common asylum procedures and compulsory burden-sharing.

The problem is the machinery. France has still not published the national legislation needed to apply the Pact. Spain will use much shorter appeal deadlines without a judicial framework adapted to them. Italy’s implementation plan remains unpublished. Nine member states have not tested the IT systems for Eurodac, the shared biometric database on which the system depends (ETIAS.com). The law is ready. The administration behind it is not.

Seven-day screening, twelve-week decisions

The Pact is built around speed at the EU’s external border, which makes it directly relevant to Malta. Anyone arriving at an external border must be screened within seven days, with biometric data collected from the age of six (European Commission).

Applicants from countries where fewer than 20% of asylum claims succeed go into a fast-track border procedure. Their first decision and appeal must be completed within 12 weeks. During that period, EU law treats them as not having entered EU territory (CGRS Belgium).

The other major change is mandatory solidarity. Front-line states such as Italy, Spain, Greece and Cyprus can ask for help from other EU countries. Those states must either relocate asylum seekers, pay roughly €20,000 for each person they refuse to take, or provide staff and equipment. The first solidarity pool covers June to December 2026: 21,000 relocations or €420 million (French Senate). Hungary and Slovakia pledged nothing.

The Commission’s own readiness report, published on May 8, found that only 15 of 27 member states had the screening infrastructure and staff in place (European Commission, ETIAS.com). Free legal aid, required by the Pact, was unavailable in six states including Greece and Italy, both officially listed as under acute migratory pressure. The independent mechanism to monitor fundamental rights at borders was not operational in Belgium, Hungary, Italy or Malta (European Commission).

Three countries, three legal gaps

France has chosen the most centralised route. The government bypassed parliament by using Article 38 of the constitution, which allows the executive to legislate by decree for a limited period. That process rewrites roughly 40% of the immigration code. The left and the right objected for different political reasons, but both also objected to the bypass itself (Le Monde).

No ordinance has been published. The government has suggested using a circular, meaning an administrative instruction to officials rather than binding law, to cover the gap. The Conseil d’État, France’s highest administrative court, warned of a period of "legal insecurity" as old rules and new EU obligations coexist without clear guidance (Conseil d'État).

Spain faces a different problem. The state attorney confirmed on June 1 that appeal deadlines will shrink from two months to as little as five days, without a national law setting out the transition for the courts (EuropaPress).

Poland secured a political exception. It won a one-year exemption from relocation obligations by arguing that hosting more than a million Ukrainian refugees, while defending the eastern Schengen border, amounts to equivalent solidarity. Prime Minister Donald Tusk presented the exemption as settled (VisaHQ). It runs out in December.

New return rules pile on

On June 1, the European Parliament, the EU’s directly elected chamber, and the Council, where member-state governments sit, reached a provisional deal on the Returns Regulation. The deal would allow deportation to "return hubs" in third countries with no previous connection to the person being removed. It would also extend administrative detention to 24 months and remove the automatic right to stay while appealing a return decision (European Parliament, Euronews).

ECRE, Europe’s largest refugee rights network, called it "one of the most punitive and dangerous migration instruments in recent EU history" (ECRE).

Taken together, the Pact and the Returns Regulation create a system designed around compressed time: seven-day screening, 12-week decisions, shorter appeals and faster deportation. The Commission’s own readiness report points to the basic weakness. Many member states still do not have the courts, lawyers or border facilities to run that system by June 12.