BRUSSELS — Ten European countries have now reinstated internal border checks, the clearest signal yet that the European Union’s flagship migration agreement is struggling to hold together the bloc it was designed to unite. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum officially took full effect this month, but the rollout has exposed deep rifts between Western European governments seeking managed migration and Eastern European states unwilling to accept any binding relocation formula.
The pact was years in the making — a response to the 2015 migration crisis that exposed the EU’s inability to share responsibility fairly among member states. Its central mechanisms include mandatory solidarity contributions from all member states, accelerated asylum procedures at external borders, and a returns acceleration process meant to send irregular migrants home faster. The theory was that binding rules would reduce the pull of irregular migration while distributing the burden more equitably across the bloc.
In practice, the numbers tell a more complicated story. Human Rights Watch, in an assessment published this week, called the pact “harmful” — arguing that its fast-track border procedures risk denying genuine refugees adequate legal protection. The group highlighted concerns over extended detention periods and reduced access to appeals before removal orders are executed. The criticism reflects a broader tension embedded in the agreement: the harder the EU pushes on returns, the more it risks running roughshod over international protection obligations.
Countries that have reinstated border checks include Italy, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, and now Switzerland — which is not an EU member but a Schengen associate. The reimposition of passport controls, technically permitted under emergency provisions in the Schengen Borders Code, creates friction within the free-movement zone and raises questions about whether the pact’s “mandatory solidarity” mechanism has any real teeth when member states can simply opt for unilateral control.
Poland and Hungary, both governed by parties that have made migration restriction a central political identity, have rejected the relocation formula entirely. Warsaw has insisted it will contribute financially to the system but will not accept mandatory intake quotas. Budapest has gone further, questioning whether the pact’s legal basis is even valid under EU law. Their defiance has not been formally sanctioned, and the European Commission — mindful of triggering a larger political backlash — has so far confined its response to infringement procedures that move at a pace snail-like by EU standards.
The political dynamics inside member states are adding fuel to the fire. In France, the government’s handling of migration has become a flashpoint ahead of regional elections, with opposition parties arguing the new pact is both too lenient and too bureaucratic. In Germany, the rise of parties with hardline immigration platforms has pushed the coalition toward stricter enforcement rhetoric even as interior ministry officials quietly acknowledge that returns targets are not being met.
EU interior ministers, meeting in Brussels this week, sought to project unity. The official communique described the pact’s implementation as “on track” and praised the “solidarity mechanism” as a historic achievement. Behind closed doors, three diplomatic sources told Media Hook, the conversation was considerably less confident. One described the mood as “managing a controlled descent rather than celebrating a triumph.”
The core problem is structural. The EU can agree on rules at the summit level, but enforcement depends on national governments with divergent political incentives. A country that refuses to take relocations cannot be forced to do so short of a European Court of Justice ruling that takes years to materialise and carries no automatic sanction. The result is a system that looks robust in regulation and proves porous in practice.
Whether the pact survives its first real stress test depends less on the text of the agreement than on the political will of member states to absorb migrants they would rather not accept — and on whether the Commission is prepared to enforce the rules it wrote. The border controls spreading across Europe are a symptom, not a cure. They buy time. They do not resolve the fundamental question of who bears responsibility for Europe’s migration challenge, and for how long the bloc can continue to paper over that question with emergency provisions and diplomatic shorthand.