Common European Asylum System in a Changing World

issue of solidarity because it introduces the corrective allocation mechanism which is strongly opposed by certain Member States. As to the Asylum Procedures Regulation, the safe country concepts and border procedure have been primarily debated. When it comes to the other five proposals, a compromise was reached to certain extent at the stage of trilogue negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council but some disputes have still exist. 4.3.5 Next steps It follows from the foregoing that the Union bodies did not manage to adopt the proposed legislation on asylum before the end of the 8 th parliamentary term. Thus, after the European Parliament elections in May 2019 , the Commission proposals on the CEAS fall into “unfinished business” in line with the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament (8 th parliamentary term) and their future is unclear. Under the rule 229, “[a]t the end of the last part-session before elections, all Parliament’s unfinished business shall be deemed to have lapsed, subject to the provisions of the second paragraph.” The second paragraph stipulates that at the beginning of each parliamentary term, the Conference of Presidents of the EP shall take a decision on requests of parliamentary committees or other institutions (including the Commission and the Council) to resume or continue the consideration of such unfinished business. In other words, the legislative process concerning the CEAS reform was finished at the end of the 8 th parliamentary term and has to start all over again after the elections, unless the Conference of Presidents makes a decision to continue. Such a decision shall be taken upon a request of either a parliamentary committee (probably the LIBE Committee – the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee – because the proposals on the CEAS reform were assigned to it), the Commission or the Council. The decision in question has not been taken yet (January 2020) mainly due to the fact that the new Commission did not take office until 1 December 2019. It is also worth noting that the composition of the European Parliament changed after the elections in 2019, which may affect the decision whether to continue debating the proposals on the CEAS. In particular, the European People’s Party together with the Socialists and Democrats no longer have a majority in the European Parliament (they have 336 members out of 751 members of the EP). There are many issues concerning particular proposals on the CEAS reform. As to the reform as a whole, it is apparent that the migration crisis revealed shortcomings of the functioning of the current CEAS and, thus, modifications are necessary. On the other hand, one may have several conceptual objections to the proposed reform: • First , already the current CEAS includes a legal instrument designed for a mass inflow of migrants into the European Union, namely the Temporary Protection Directive adopted during the first phase of harmonisation in 2001. Nevertheless, the Commission decided to thoroughly reform the CEAS although this Directive has not been applied at all. Furthermore, the number of applications significantly decreased in 2018 (see supra ) even without a reform of the CEAS. Therefore, the question is whether an extensive reform of the whole system is really necessary. legislation which has to be then approved by the plenary of the EP and the Council. Trilogues are very effective and facilitate adoption of even controversial pieces of legislation. However, they are criticised for not being stipulated by the founding Treaties (TEU, TFEU) and being non-transparent since they are not open to the public.

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