European Union

Almost a decade of negotiations on the European Pact on Migration and Asylum came to an end in May 2024. Statements such as “it is perhaps one of the most important decisions in this legislative period, and it is certainly one of the most difficult for many” and “Today is a truly historic day, as we have delivered on the Migration and Asylum Pact, possibly the most important legislative package of this mandate” illustrate how much political weight was placed on the New Pact. As the Pact moves from negotiation to implementation, one question stands out: What impact will a negotiation process that was both lengthy and finalized under enormous time pressure have on implementation?

To understand the interplay of the Pact’s negotiations and implementation, a look back on how the process evolved over the past decade is essential. The first proposals were presented in 2015 in “A European Agenda on Migration”. However, no agreement was reached during the term of the Jucker Commission (2014-2019), due to persistent differences between member states. Upon entry into office, Ursula von der Leyen made a New Pact on Migration and Asylum one of her priorities. To underline its importance she included it in her political guidelines and in the mission letter to Commissioner Ylva Johansson and Vice-President Margaritis Schinas. Although this initiative was more a reformulation of the Agenda on Migration than a completely new Pact, it was ultimately successfully negotiated under the first von der Leyen Commission.

The successful conclusion of the negotiations was presented by the Commission as an important and just-in-time success. But what will the Pact change? Simplified and accelerated procedures will be mandatory in a broad variety of cases, introducing new grounds for detention. Intensified partnerships with third countries constitute an essential part of a reinforced external dimension. Lastly, instead of a binding solidarity mechanism, the Pact applies “flexible solidarity”, giving the member states the opportunity to choose their contribution à la carte.

Political negotiations under time pressure

Upon her election as Commission President in 2019 Ursula von der Leyen made securing an agreement on the New Pact within her term of office one of her top priorities. However, in September 2021, she admitted that “progress has been painfully slow” and urged the co-legislators to “speed up the process”. One instrument adopted to address this concern was an inter-institutional agreement setting out a joint roadmap, signed by the European Parliament and the rotating Presidencies of the Council of the EU (France, Czechia, Sweden, Spain and Belgium) in September 2022. This roadmap set a clear deadline: “Conclusion of the whole Pact by the end of this parliamentary term.”

But even with the new 2020 proposals and a joint roadmap in place, member states remained deeply divided. Some pushed for a mandatory relocation mechanism, while others wanted to limit secondary movements; this conflict continued to be a key point of contention. The differing priorities of member states, combined with the preference of some governments to pursue decisions by consensus, even where qualified majority voting applied, are among the main reasons that delayed the process. Following the roadmap, inter-institutional negotiations were supposed to begin by the end of 2022. However this timeline could not be met, as the Council only reached agreement on several key elements in June 2023. 

The Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation exemplifies inter-institutional negotiations under time pressure. In September 2023, the EP announced that further interinstitutional negotiations would be put on hold. The reason: although close to the targeted end of the negotiations, the member states – again – had not yet taken a position on this controversial piece of legislation. Indeed, the Council only agreed to a negotiating mandate for the Regulation on 4 October 2023. Given that the declared aim was to conclude negotiations before the end of the year, this left little time to bridge institutional differences and finalise such a complex legislative package.

Despite these constraints, on 20 December 2023, the Council announced that a deal had been found on the core political elements of the Pact. After years of protracted discussions, political agreement was finally reached, although many of the technical aspects still required further work. Officially, the EP approved the final package of legislative acts on 10 April 2024 and the Council on 14 May. A four-month period to develop the core political principles into technically mature legislative acts seems to be rather short. Considering that the Pact includes ten legislative texts that are interconnected and supposed to form a common framework without internal contradictions, this appears to be a mammoth task. By shifting the negotiations away from the technical level, the political symbolic value of reaching an agreement came to outweigh considerations of legal and practical feasibility.

Implementation at the technical level

While negotiations on the Pact took place at the political level between member states, the process of implementation takes place at the technical level. At the EU level, this process is steered by the Commission, which kicked the process off in June 2024 with the release of the Common Implementation Plan (CIP). As with the negotiations, there is an implementation deadline: the CIP specifies what steps need to be taken to ensure that the instruments of the Pact are operational by June 2026.

The process had a rocky start: the first major milestone in the implementation of the Pact was the submission of the National Implementation Plans (NIPs) by the member states in December 2024. In these plans, member states must outline how they want  to apply the changes that the Pact necessitates. Although the CIP was published in June rather than September so that “Member States have the maximum time to prepare their National Implementation Plans (…)”, half of the member states missed the first deadline. By June 2025, 25 member states had submitted their NIP.

Besides the rocky start, the implementation process is also complicated by technical problems in the legislation. The political agreement on the Pact promised simplified asylum procedures. However, legal analysis of the provisions of the new Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR) shows that the new rules lead to “considerable complexity”. This is because the new legislation expands the (mandatory) use of special procedures, creating distinctions between groups of migrants. When the APR was first proposed in 2021, NGO umbrella organisation ECRE warned of a “procedural labyrinth”. At the same time, the APR mandates that the asylum border procedure should take no more than 6 months in the regular procedure. The implementation demands far-reaching operational changes to the asylum systems of member states, which were not a focus of the negotiation process.

It is now up to the technical level to ensure that this “procedural labyrinth” is implemented in the member states. To do so, the Commission has created dedicated country teams for each member state and organises meetings of expert groups, attended by representatives of the Commission and member states. According to the CIP, these meetings aim to facilitate discussion and the exchange of information and best practices, and issue guidance. The legal experts of the Commission clarify for member states how provisions must be interpreted. Additionally, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) is involved in the issuing of guidance and training for those working on the ground in member states’ asylum systems. By June 2026, the implementation of the APR and other instruments of the Pact should have led to “convergence in the assessment and decision-making process of individual asylum applications across Europe (…)”.

What’s next?

We have described a sharp contrast between the political and contested nature of the Pact negotiations, and the technical nature and challenges of its implementation. Even after adoption, this contrast remains: as is stated in the Commission’s State of play on the implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum from June 2025, “while progress is being made at the technical level, sustained political engagement and ownership at national level remain essential to address the identified challenges effectively”.

Here lies the main challenge of the implementation of the Pact: while steps are being taken at the technical level, the support for a European approach to migration and asylum policy at the level of national governments is wavering as political discourse on migration moves further to the right. Although we cannot predict the future, recent events such as the (planned) border closures in Germany and the Netherlands have shown that rather than a “coordinated response”, member states favour unilateral, restrictive actions that only serve to further harden Europe’s treatment of vulnerable migrants and weaken free movement in the Schengen Area.

The instruments of the Pact should be operational by June 2026, meaning that the implementation process is over halfway. It is unclear what EU member states’ asylum systems will look like at that time, but the chances of “convergence” are unlikely. For that, implementation is too challenging and cooperation too politically contested.

 

Nicola Diedrich is a PhD candidate at the Fulda Graduate Centre of Social Sciences, specializing in the Centre’s branch on European Integration. Her research focuses on negotiation dynamics within the EU from a micropolitical perspective.

Puck Overhaart is a PhD Candidate in Political Science and Public Administration at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research focus is on the enforcement of EU migration law.

The authors are responsible for the content of the blogposts.

This blog post is based on the outcomes of the SCEUS Summer school on European Union migration policies, which took place in Salzburg, 7-11 July 2025, as part of EUCHALLENGES, a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence co-funded by the European Commission under grant agreement no. 101127539.

The post The Pact: Between Negotiations and Implementation appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 30 September 2025, Ursula von der Leyen announced that the European Union will present new climate targets for 2035 and 2040 at COP30 next year. As Europe prepares for COP30 in Belem, these goals are meant to reinforce Europe’s global leadership on climate action. This statement shows that the EU is preparing to move from long-term promises to concrete actions toward climate neutrality.

However, as new targets take shape, Europe’s spending priorities are beginning to raise questions about the EU’s genuine commitment to climate action. The Climate Policy Initiative highlights that only a small share of global climate finance in 2021–2022 — about 5% of the total per year — was directed toward adaptation. The aim of adaptation is to help people and ecosystems cope with the unavoidable effects of climate change — such as building flood defences, improving drought-resistant agriculture, or developing early-warning systems. Yet much of this funding failed to reach low-income countries, where the need for such support is greatest. Moreover, the debate surrounding the $250 billion climate finance proposal at COP29 underscores this issue. While adaptation funding struggles to reach affected communities, NATO members collectively spent €343 billion on defence in 2024, and new rearmament plans could generate hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO₂ emissions over the next decade. This imbalance underscores how Europe’s spending priorities may tell a different story about what it values — human security or military power?

This gap in priorities has tangible human consequences. Ultimately, addressing the climate crisis is not only about emissions trajectories or dates on a roadmap, but also about people: the farmers who lose crops to drought, families who flee floods, or communities forced to move because their homes are no longer safe. From local to global, climate change is reshaping mobility across Europe and beyond.

And here, one fact must be underlined from the very beginning: the effects of climate change are not gender neutral.

Women and marginalised groups often face the steepest barriers in displacement: reduced access to resources, higher risks of poverty, and greater exposure to violence. It is essential to adopt a gender lens in any global response to climate-induced migration, especially when it comes to resilience building and addressing the gendered dimensions of climate migration. Yet EU policy frameworks still largely overlook these realities by making almost no reference to gender or intersectionality in national or EU-level approaches.

EU governance policy is gender blind

For all its progress on climate mitigation, the EU remains unprepared for the challenges to governance posed by climate migration.

People displaced by environmental disasters are not protected under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and within the EU, such cases rarely qualify for international protection, as there are deficiencies in the protection of environmentally displaced persons under existing asylum frameworks. While complementary protection mechanisms — such as the Qualification Directive, the Temporary Protection Directive, and the Return Directive’s non-refoulement provisions — could in principle offer alternatives for people displaced by environmental factors, each of these instruments has significant gaps and limitations. Most climate-displaced people remain in a legal limbo: not fully recognised, not adequately protected, and often excluded from access to housing, work, or healthcare.

A European Parliament’s report highlights that people forced to move due to environmental factors fall outside existing protection regimes. Although the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, adopted in 2024, is an attempt to create a more coherent approach to migration management, it still fails to acknowledge climate-induced mobility as a distinct governance challenge. It continues to prioritise border control and return procedures over forward-looking adaptation and inclusion measures, leaving a major policy gap.

This gap becomes even more concerning when seen through a gender lens. Displaced women often depend economically on others, face reduced mobility and political visibility, and are more vulnerable to gender-based violence. The UN Women policy brief on migration and climate change explicitly warns that women on the move are more likely to experience exploitation and loss of income after climate-related displacement, while having limited access to legal protection and humanitarian assistance. Despite this, EU frameworks continue to treat migrants as a homogeneous group, overlooking how overlapping inequalities — gender, age, migration status, disability, etc.— compound vulnerabilities.

Towards an intersectional approach

These limitations lead to a broader gap in EU governance, one that calls for a more integrated and inclusive approach. Addressing this blind spot requires an intersectional shift in EU governance. Intersectionality helps us understand how different dimensions of identity overlap, producing compounded risks. For example, a woman with an irregular legal status displaced by flooding does not only experience climate stress. She also carries the burdens of gendered exclusion and legal precarity that deepen her vulnerability.

Without acknowledging these intersections, EU migration and climate frameworks risk reproducing the same inequalities they claim to address. Symbolic attempts — like adding the word ‘gender’ to a strategy document — are not enough. Professor Gill Allwood points out that the EU’s Adaptation Strategy (2021) refers to gender just once in a single footnote noting that “men and women, older people, persons with disabilities, displaced persons, or socially marginalised groups have different adaptive capabilities”. The Mobility Strategy and Action Plan does little better: it mentions gender once, in a paragraph about encouraging more women to work in transport. However, these are acknowledgments, not actions.

The European Institute for Gender Equality has underlined that gender considerations in EU climate and environmental policies remain unevenly integrated and insufficiently implemented. In this sense, many scholars and civil society organisations criticised the EU Gender Equality Strategy (2020–2025) for lacking concrete mechanisms to implement its intersectional commitments, arguing that it remains largely rhetorical and fails to translate intersectionality into actionable policy change. Hence, can the EU truly claim leadership on climate justice if gender remains an afterthought?

What is needed is structural integration, not rhetorical inclusion. This means creating genuine coordination between climate, migration, and gender policy bodies, so these areas work together rather than in silos. It also means using gender-disaggregated data to guide adaptation and migration funding, ensuring that resources reach those most at risk. Local actors, particularly municipalities, must be supported, as they are often the first to face the realities of displacement and adaptation. As highlighted by the Platform on Disaster Displacement, responses to climate-related displacement should prioritise human dignity, rights, and inclusion — not only border control.

Why now?

The urgency is clear. The European Environment Agency recently warned that more than 81% of Europe’s protected habitats are already in poor and bad conservation status. Floods, fires, and heatwaves will grow more severe in the years ahead, driving mobility both within the EU and across its borders.

At the same time, the Gender Equality Strategy (2026–2030) is currently being rewritten. Civil society groups and the European Institute for Gender Equality are calling for stronger, institutional commitments that move past tokenistic mainstreaming. This moment offers a rare opportunity to connect those gender commitments with climate and migration governance. If the gendered dimensions of climate impacts and mobility are not identified and measured at this stage, they will not be meaningfully addressed and implemented at the later stages. Inherently, the same blind spots will persist in the next decade of EU policymaking.

COP30 will be remembered for the targets Europe sets. But it could also be remembered for whether Europe recognizes that climate ambition without social justice is incomplete. Climate migration is already happening; its gendered impacts are already visible. The question is whether the EU will take them seriously.

Conclusion

Climate change is not gender-neutral — and neither is climate migration. Across Europe and beyond, women and marginalised groups are already experiencing its unequal effects. Yet decades of fragmented policies have shown that treating climate, migration, and gender as separate agendas only deepens inequality. The next phase of EU action must confront these overlaps head-on.

As Europe prepares to set new climate targets for 2035 and 2040, this moment offers more than a chance to tighten emission goals — it is an opportunity to redesign governance around inclusion and justice. That means integrating gender and intersectionality at every stage, from policy design to implementation and evaluation, and ensuring that those most at risk are both visible and heard in the process.

If the EU is consistent about equality, dignity, and justice, this is the time to act. Climate action that fails to account for who is most affected will never be truly effective. Targets and numbers may define ambition, but intersectionality will define fairness.

 

Berfin Tutku Ozcan, PhD Candidate in Human Rights, Global Politics and Sustainability at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.

Authors are responsible for the content of the blogposts.

This blog post is based on the outcomes of the SCEUS Summer school on European Union migration policies, which took place in Salzburg, 7-11 July 2025, as part of EUCHALLENGES, a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence co-funded by the European Commission under grant agreement no. 101127539.

 

The post From Climate Goals to Human Impacts: Why the EU Needs an Intersectional Shift Before COP30 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

AMENDMENTS 1 - 236 - Draft report Acceleration of permit-granting for defence readiness projects
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Committee on Security and Defence
Lucia Yar, Henrik Dahl

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Committees

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

On 5 November, the SEDE Committee will hold a public hearing on "EU strategic Defence and Security Partnerships", where experts will assess the current CSDP defence partnerships and put forward recommendations for the future, in line with the Strategic Compass and in view of strengthening the European Defence Union and relations with key defence partners. This hearing will be followed by the presentation of a draft report on "EU Strategic Defence and Security Partnerships".
Location : SPAAK 1A2
Programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

On 5 November, the SEDE Committee will hold a public hearing on "EU strategic Defence and Security Partnerships", where experts will assess the current CSDP defence partnerships and put forward recommendations for the future, in line with the Strategic Compass and in view of strengthening the European Defence Union and relations with key defence partners. This hearing will be followed by the presentation of a draft report on "EU Strategic Defence and Security Partnerships".
Programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 314 - Draft report Implementation of the common security and defence policy – annual report 2025
Committee on Security and Defence
Thijs Reuten

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 238 - Draft report Amending Directives 2009/43/EC and 2009/81/EC, as regards the simplification of intra-EU transfers of defence-related products and the simplification of security and defence procurement
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Committee on Security and Defence
Anna-Maja Henriksson, Pekka Toveri

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

AMENDMENTS 315 - 456 - Draft report Implementation of the common security and defence policy – annual report 2025
Committee on Security and Defence
Thijs Reuten

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The EU issued a statement on Belarus’ hybrid actions at the EU external border.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2080 of 13 October 2025 amending Decision 2010/638/CFSP concerning restrictive measures in view of the situation in Guinea.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2072 of 13 October 2025 amending Decision (CFSP) 2018/1544 concerning restrictive measures against the proliferation and use of chemical weapons.

European Council President António Costa had a meeting with President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on 28 October, in Abu Dhabi.

Council agrees on Baltic Sea fisheries catch limits for 2026 for key fish stocks, including herring, sprat, cod, salmon and plaice.

The Council extended restrictive measures individuals and groups associated with ISIL/Da'esh and Al-Qaeda for a further year, until 31 October 2026.

In 2024, the European Union and its 27 member states contributed €31.7 billion in climate finance from public sources and mobilised an additional amount of €11.0 billion of private finance to support developing countries.

Council gives its final approval to compulsory licensing regulation.

The Council has adopted a revising directive that seeks to make the representation of workers in large multinational companies more effective.