The European Parliament votes on new legislation on migration

The European Parliament will vote today on a package of new laws to overhaul its migration policy amid renewed criticism that it supports a far-right agenda instead of protecting vulnerable people.
Ylva Johansson, the European commissioner for home affairs who was the driving force behind the legislation, said that with reforms aimed at "managing migration in an organized way", the 27-member bloc was taking a step towards neutralizing the populist far-right, the Guardian reported.
"We've already defeated a lot of the arguments of the far right by reaching this agreement," she told reporters, adding: "I hope we get a yes vote because it's been a long journey, a marathon. It's really going to be a big moment for Europe, which will show that we can deal with very challenging policy issues in an environment that is even more challenging," she said.
But the package of laws remains controversial even among supportive politicians, with critics saying that rather than neutralizing the far-right, the new laws effectively normalize their arguments and do nothing to stem the rising death toll on migration routes to the EU.
Malin Björk, an MEP from the Swedish Left Party, said: "This is an adaptation of what the far right has wanted for years. Can we come up with something even more dehumanizing? The project takes some of the worst practices in the EU and institutionalises them."
Ahead of the vote, representatives of 161 civil society organizations called on MEPs to reject the legislation, saying it was "wrong from the start".
Stephanie Pope, Oxfam's EU migration expert, said the package had little to do with the human rights of desperate people and more to do with "deterrence, detention and deportation". The legislation, which will be voted on two months before European elections in June, is "highly politicized and not based on experience", she added.
The wide-ranging package of laws, first proposed in 2018, aims to speed up asylum processes, with decisions on admissibility and forced return being made within 12 weeks.
The laws will also introduce a single central screening system at all points at the EU's external borders, as well as a "solidarity" mechanism requested by Greece and Italy to allow countries overwhelmed by the volume of arrivals to transfer procedures for obtaining asylum in another member state.
If passed, the legislation would also create Eurodac, a central database that would allow member states to see if someone has applied for asylum in another country./BGNES