Rights campaigners claim that the end result could be more detentions, more illegal pushbacks, or even a boost to migrant smugglers who are eager to exploit the clampdown on fundamental rights. Critics warn that it could lead to the same ghetto camps seen on Greek islands.

In its original proposal, the European Commission sought to exclude families that have children under 12 years of age from a bill intended to speed up the asylum process.

Margaritis Schinas, vice-president of the European Commission in 2020, said: “We exclude them so that we can ensure that they don’t go through this cumbersome and lengthy process that is often inhumane.”

In a document dated 28th April, seen by EUobserver and dated 3 years later, the Swedish EU Presidency wants to include families with children in the process.

Birgit Sippel (German socialist) is one of the leading MEPs involved in the reform of asylum laws. She has said that the Parliament will oppose.

In an email, she stated that “the position of the parliament is beyond doubt: The border procedure shall not apply to unaccompanied minors or families with children of 12 years and younger.”

Sippel said the maximum age should be 18 in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Oxfam’s EU asylum and migration policy advisor Stephanie Pope said, “It is the worst version that we’ve seen to date.”

She said that the text presented by the council, which represents member states, will mean vulnerable people will be sent to the border procedure.

All those who come from countries where the rates of recognition for international protection are below 20% will be sent. This was also part of the original plans.

The commission has now buckled under pressure from hawkish EU countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, who are worried that migrants will try to move and settle somewhere else.

‘Adequate capacity’

The commission has proposed a concept called ‘adequate capability’, which tries to determine how many people are automatically sent through the border procedure.

It means that everyone is sent, regardless of their recognition rate, until a pre-determined threshold has been reached.

“The challenge is that this proposal has nothing to do with what was originally proposed,” said Catherine Woollard at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles in Brussels.

She said that the horrific conditions that will likely appear along the border as a result of this will be used to further encourage EU states to curtail the asylum process altogether through illegal pushbacks.

Other factors are also at play. The EU and its institutions face intense pressure to finalise the overhaul of the asylum and immigration pact at the beginning of next year.

In the first half of this month, the European Parliament approved its mandate for negotiations with the Council.

Under the Swedish EU presidency’s stewardship, the council is negotiating away rights by punching gaps in EU law.

They hope to convince the ‘Med 5 (composed by Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta) to accept more responsibility at the EU’s borders. This includes reviving the so-called regulation of instrumentalisation that EU states had voted against in December.

The regulation contained a number of loopholes that allowed EU states to abandon their asylum rights when a country like Belarus pushed people across the border. The tactic is to merge the regulation with the crisis regulation – another bill in the pact – as a possible concession for the Med 5.

Woollard said that “these efforts to block the instrumentisation regulation may be a kind of Pyrrhic win, because it will come back to being incorporated in the crisis regulation”.

According to another source, Spain initially opposed the merger, but now seems to be giving in. This raises questions about how far its upcoming EU Presidency, beginning in July, will push for more loopholes and exceptions.