Political agreement on the reform of the illegal Migration and Asylum Pact was reached between the Council of the EU, the European Commission and the European Parliament, after long talks that started on Monday.

@eu2023es delivers ?@EUCouncil and @Europarl_EN reach breakthrough in the reform to improve the EU migration and asylum system.

A political agreement has been reached on the five files of the EU new Pact on Migration and Asylum.#EU2023ES pic.twitter.com/Fr70DGFZzM

— Presidencia española del Consejo de la UE (@eu2023es) December 20, 2023

In principle, this agreement concerns five pillars for all stages of asylum and immigration management, ranging from the screening of irregular migrants upon their arrival in the EU, the collection of biometric data, the procedures for submitting and processing asylum applications, the rules for determining of the Member State responsible for handling an asylum application and cooperation and solidarity between Member States and how to handle crisis situations.

Under the deal, there will be a screening regulation to rapidly profile an asylum seeker by collecting information such as nationality, age and fingerprints, then updating Eurodac, the EU’s database, with the digital fingerprints and photographs of each immigrant or refugee.

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In summary, the agreement to reform the Immigration and Asylum rules provides that:

– Member States can choose whether to accept asylum seekers from front-line Member States, or whether to pay financial contributions

– Improved identification on arrival, including facial photo and fingerprints, to include children aged six and over

– Crisis situations and the exploitation of migrants and asylum seekers from neighboring states will be addressed

– Asylum procedures will be processed faster

– There will be mandatory security and health checks for people entering the EU illegally