Good morning from Brussels, Almost ten years after the official negotiations started over a comprehensive EU-wide agreement on migration and asylum, member states remain politically unable to find common ground. A new Migration Pact was ultimately agreed upon last year and is due to take effect in 2026. However, the increase in migration flows combined with the rise of far-right parties in member states have brought migration back on the agenda. The topic will be discussed again at a summit on 17-18 October, but it is not certain it will lead to concrete results, Euractiv’s Nicholas Wallace reports. Germany, Spain, and France have all publicly called for earlier implementation of at least some parts of the new Migration Pact. In the meantime, Berlin is pushing for improving the overall implementation of transfers under the current scheme, the Dublin III Regulation. The latter puts responsibility for processing asylum requests on the first EU country where an asylum seeker arrives. Athens says the conclusions should not refer to the Dublin regulation but instead have an “overall and detailed discussion” of the migration state of play, and concrete decisions could be postponed to December. The new Migration Pact will revise the Dublin rules to oblige EU governments to help member states that are overwhelmed by the number of migrants arriving – either by accepting some of those migrants themselves or providing financial assistance. Under current Dublin rules, this provision is voluntary. But Warsaw and Budapest reject the new Migration Pact as a whole. Poland’s Donald Tusk said on Saturday that his government did not intend to respect the provisions of the new Pact. Meanwhile, the main opposition hard right PiS party mounts the pressure asking for a national referendum over the new Pact. | 