Quick Comparison: What Has Actually Changed?
| Key Change | Previous Situation | New Situation | ||||
| Division of responsibility between states | Responsibility rested almost exclusively on the country of first entry, placing extreme pressure on frontline states. | The first-entry principle remains, but is supplemented by mandatory solidarity – other states must contribute financially, materially, or through relocation. | ||||
| Screening at external borders | Inconsistent identification, registration, and security checks across EU countries. | Mandatory screening within 7 days – uniform and strict identification, security, and health checks for every apprehended third-country national. | ||||
| Speed and nature of asylum procedures | Lengthy procedures without systematic detention, which in practice facilitated secondary migration to other EU countries. | Accelerated border procedures (max. 12 weeks) – linked with detention directly at the border for applicants with low asylum success rates. | ||||
| Eurodac database tracking | Only fingerprints were recorded, and only for persons over 14 years of age. | Fingerprints and facial images (facial recognition) for better monitoring, now extended to children from 6 years of age. |
1. Border Filtering: Screening and Eurodac
The cornerstone of the new rules is the Screening Regulation. Every person who irregularly crosses the EU’s external border, is rescued at sea, or is apprehended within the EU without prior checks must undergo strict screening.
- 7-day deadline: Identification, security checks, health examination, and vulnerability assessment (e.g. detection of victims of torture or unaccompanied minors) must be completed within this period.
- Expanded Eurodac (the EU’s central biometric database): The system has evolved from a simple asylum-seeker register into a comprehensive migration management tool. A key change is the lowering of the age limit for biometric data collection from 14 to 6 years. This is primarily intended to help combat child trafficking and facilitate future family reunification.
2. Accelerated Border Procedures
If an applicant comes from a country where the EU-wide asylum success rate is below 20 %, or if they pose a proven security risk, they are automatically placed in the so-called Border Procedure.
- Legal fiction of non-entry: During this procedure, the applicant is legally considered not to have entered EU territory.
- Timeframe: The entire process, including any appeals and subsequent return, may not exceed 12 weeks.
- In practice, this allows for detention during the procedure. The Regulation also strengthens procedural safeguards, including guaranteed free legal counselling from the very beginning.
3. Mandatory Solidarity Mechanism
The most controversial element is the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation. While the core Dublin rule — that the country of first entry is primarily responsible — remains in place, it is now supplemented by a mandatory solidarity mechanism for situations where a frontline state faces extreme migratory pressure.
Importantly, the Pact does not introduce mandatory relocation quotas. Member states can choose the form of their contribution:
- Relocation – physical transfer of some applicants (entirely voluntary).
- Financial contribution – €20,000 per unaccepted applicant into a common EU fund.
- Operational and technical support – provision of staff (experts, interpreters), equipment, or operational capacity.
Impact on the Czech Republic: Thanks to the massive influx of Ukrainian refugees under temporary protection, the Czech Republic has secured a special position in the negotiations. It is currently considered a country under significant migratory pressure, which effectively exempts it from contributing to the solidarity mechanism aimed primarily at southern EU states.
4. Impact on Employers and Legal Migration in the Czech Republic
The Migration and Asylum Pact regulates only irregular migration and international protection. EU rules on legal economic migration (such as the EU Blue Card) remain unchanged.
However, the simultaneous implementation of the Pact, the upcoming amendment to the Asylum Act, and the preparation of an entirely new Foreigners Act may strain the administrative capacity of state institutions. This overlap could slow down the processing of standard residence permits for foreign workers.
Employment of persons granted asylum: Employers must clearly distinguish between asylum seekers and those who have already been granted protection. Recognised refugees and persons with subsidiary protection have free access to the labour market. Asylum seekers, however, face strict restrictions: employment is completely prohibited during the first 6 months after submitting an application. Violations carry heavy fines for the employer. After six months, employment is possible, but the applicant must first obtain a work permit from the regional Labour Office.
5. Criticism and Implementation Risks
While EU institutions present the Pact as a much-needed step toward systemisation, human rights organisations (such as Human Rights Watch, ECRE, and the European Policy Centre) warn of risks associated with its rapid implementation. The main concerns are:
- Increased detention: Accelerated border procedures and the legal fiction of non-entry will lead to more frequent and longer detention, including families with children over 12.
- Weakened individual assessment: Automatic placement into accelerated procedures based solely on statistics (e.g. country of origin with <20% asylum success rate) shifts the burden of proof entirely onto the applicant.
- Quality of border screening: Doubts remain whether ordinary border guards will have sufficient expertise to promptly identify vulnerable persons (e.g. victims of human trafficking).
- Limited right to appeal: In some accelerated procedures, appeals no longer have automatic suspensive effect.
- Dangerous “first-day illusion”: Analysts warn that member states are focusing on externalisation — plans to move rejected applicants to return centres outside the EU. While this may temporarily reduce pressure at the borders, it creates a false impression that the system works and diverts attention and funds from building real administrative capacity inside the EU.
6. Czech Transposition
Beyond the EU Pact itself, a major practical challenge is the way the new rules have been incorporated into Czech law (through implementing Amendment No. 314/2025 Coll.). As Judge JUDr. Martin Kopa, Ph.D. of the Regional Court in Brno aptly noted in his recent analysis, calling it an “intertemporal inferno”, the transitional provisions have created a highly confusing legal situation.While EU regulations clearly state that the new procedures apply only to applications submitted after 12 June 2026, the Czech transitional provisions are so duplicative and unclear that they are already causing conflicting interpretations even at the level of regional administrative courts.For applicants and their legal representatives, this means complex legal battles in the coming months and years — not only over the right to protection itself, but over which procedural rules even apply to their cases.
Conclusion
The new Pact represents a shift from crisis management to a systematic — albeit highly complex — pan-European solution. For applicants, it brings faster procedures, but at the cost of a stricter border regime and the risk of widespread detention. The true test of the Pact will not be its political approval, but its everyday confrontation with reality. For the Czech Republic, a period of complicated legislative and procedural “interim space” has begun, bringing considerable legal uncertainty that will most likely be clarified only through the case law of regional courts and the Supreme Administrative Court (NSS).