The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum enters into force today, two years after it was formally adopted. After a decade in which migration has increasingly dominated European politics, the reforms reflect a broader shift away from emergency responses and towards a more restrictive, enforcement-based approach, aimed at strengthening control over Europe’s external borders. The pact is an important step in the bloc’s plans to reduce immigration and points to a realism impacting Europe’s policy.

The details of the pact employ a variety of methods to limit migration. It seeks to standardise how member states handle migration by introducing mandatory screenings at external borders within seven days, covering identity, health, and security checks, with biometric data logged into a wider European database. Member states must participate in a solidarity mechanism, either by accepting relocated asylum seekers, providing operational assistance, or making a financial contribution of €20,000 for each asylum seeker it declines to relocate. Alongside it, the Return Regulation agreed earlier this month establishes return hubs outside EU territory for rejected applicants, imposes stricter entry bans, lengthens detention periods, and expands investigative powers.

It is uncertain whether the pact will function as intended. Despite today’s deadline, many member states, like Cyprus, Greece and Italy, are still struggling to complete the necessary preparations. Several have yet to update domestic legislation, connect to the Eurodac system, which tracks asylum seekers once they enter the bloc, or prepare the reception facilities, staff, and legal safeguards required for the new border procedures.

These reforms have attracted sustained backlash from human rights groups who warn that the reforms prioritise deterrence over protection. The danger is that accelerated procedures, expanded detention powers and return hubs risk weakening procedural safeguards and shifting responsibility for asylum seekers onto third countries with weaker protection systems. Some have also warned that the Return Regulation imports ICE-style enforcement — like home raids, prolonged detention, and offshore processing — into European law.

Those concerns have been reinforced by the bloc’s decision to pursue talks with Taliban representatives on facilitating the deportations of rejected Afghan asylum seekers. No formal date has been set, but the plans have caused an outcry. Questions remain about both the legality and ethics of returning migrants to a country in the midst of a severe humanitarian crisis. Although the EU describes the discussions as technical and does not formally recognise the Taliban government, the willingness to engage reflects how migration management is increasingly shaping the EU’s external relationships. Where policies like these may once have shaped Europe’s desire to place ethics above all else, a realism is taking hold among politicians across Europe.

In this sense, the pact and the proposed Return Regulation illustrate the direction of travel in European migration policy. What began as a defensive response to pressure from Europe’s hard Right has transformed into a policy architecture built around deterrence, detention, and externalisation. Europe seems to finally be institutionalising the idea that migration reform is needed, and it is not just the domain of the hard-Right. But questions remain about whether the EU has the coherence to make it function, let alone the will.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in the Eurointelligence newsletter.