European Pact on Migration and Asylum and the reform of the Schengen Borders Code: an openly racist policy
This January 29 2026, Anafé publishes an analysis of the provisions of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum applicable to borders and Schengen Borders Code reform. On this occasion, it warns of the disastrous consequences of these texts for migrants arriving at French borders.
The return to an area without internal borders promised by the European Union is nothing but a mirage. The European Pact on Migration and Asylum, adopted in the spring of 2024 and set to come into force on 1 July 2026, on the one hand, and the reform of the Schengen Borders Code, on the other, multiply the obstacles to reach the EU’s territory and to benefit from the asylum procedure. Comprising nine difficult-to-understand texts, the Pact generalises the sorting, detention and refoulement of foreign nationals.
The length of detention in zones d’attente (in English: “holding centres” – detention centers at the French borders) will increase from 26 days to more than six months for people undergoing asylum procedures at the border. The number of lodgings in holding centres is set to double by summer 2026. Violence linked to detention will increase and trauma will worsen.
Alongside the strengthening of external border controls resulting from the Pact, the revision of the Schengen Borders Code paves the way for an expansion of internal border controls and their reinforcement, should member states decide to reintroduce them. It also establishes a new transfer procedure to facilitate returns from one country to another.
Thus, Fortress Europe is being strengthened both at its external and internal borders: sophisticated control techniques, (supposedly) increased efficiency of border screening procedures, increased number and volume of personal data collected (if necessary, by force, including on children from the age of 6), and widespread detention. Suspicion, dehumanisation and repression are the core values of these texts.
By stigmatising foreigners and hindering their migration journeys, the Pact and the Schengen Borders Code reform are rushing headlong into the trend set by the rise of the far right and the normalisation of xenophobia.
It would have been wiser to take full measure of the deadly and systemic violence of European migration policies that have been in place for decades and finally change course.
A few months before the implementation of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, Anafé warns of the foreseeable consequences of these texts and denounces, once again, the racist and xenophobic logic at work in the development of French and European migration policies.
