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Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee – Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council – European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy (COM(2026) 45 final)

EESC 2026/00703

OJ C, C/2026/5103, 20.10.2026, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/5103/oj (BG, ES, CS, DA, DE, ET, EL, EN, FR, GA, HR, IT, LV, LT, HU, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO, SK, SL, FI, SV)

ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/5103/oj

Date of document:: 15/07/2026; Date of vote
Date of vote:: 15/07/2026
Date lodged:: 17/02/2026

Author:: European Economic and Social Committee
Responsible body:: Section for Employment, Social Affairs and Citizenship
Rapporteur:: José Antonio MORENO DÍAZ
Form:: Opinion
Internal reference:: AVIS-SECTION 2026/0703 FIN, SOC/859
Session:: 607

Treaty:

Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

Legal basis:

12016E304

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Earlier related instruments:

52026DC0045 ESC Opinion

Instruments cited:

EUROVOC descriptor:

Subject matter:

Immigration and asylum policy

Directory code:

19.10.30.00 Area of freedom, security and justice / Free movement of persons / Asylum policy

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Official Journal
of the European Union

C series

C/2026/5103

20.10.2026

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee

Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council – European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy

(COM(2026) 45 final)

(C/2026/5103)

Rapporteur:

José Antonio MORENO DÍAZ

Advisor	Gemma PINYOL (to the Group II rapporteur)
Plenary Assembly decision	17.2.2026
Referral	European Commission, 1.4.2026
Legal basis	Article 304 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
Section responsible	Employment, Social Affairs and Citizenship
Adopted in section	25.6.2026
Adopted at plenary session	15.7.2026
Plenary session No	607
Outcome of vote (for/against/abstentions)	200/5/24

1. Conclusions and recommendations

1.1.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) takes note of the Communication COM(2026) 45 final establishing the first European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy and acknowledges its intention to provide a comprehensive framework for EU action over the next five years. However, the Committee considers that the strategy reflects an imbalanced approach, prioritising control, containment and return over a genuinely comprehensive, rights-based migration policy.

1.2.

The EESC recommends that the European Commission rebalance the strategy by placing equal emphasis on regular migration pathways, integration and inclusion policies, and the protection of fundamental rights. Migration should be addressed as a structural, multifaceted phenomenon with social, economic and humanitarian dimensions, rather than primarily as a security challenge.

1.3.

The EESC calls for clear, accessible and diversified legal pathways to be established for migration to the EU, covering all skill levels and purposes, including labour migration, family reunification and humanitarian admission. Limiting regular migration mainly to highly skilled talent risks increasing irregular migration and undermining policy coherence.

1.4.

The EESC urges the Commission and Member States to ensure that all migration-related measures fully comply with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This requires binding, independent and transparent monitoring mechanisms, particularly at the EU’s external borders and in return procedures.

1.5.

The EESC strongly recommends reinforcing procedural safeguards in asylum systems, including the right to an individual assessment, access to legal aid and effective judicial protection. The use of accelerated procedures, safe country concepts and digital tools must not compromise these guarantees.

1.6.

The EESC calls for a more balanced approach to returns, ensuring that they remain a measure of last resort within a broader, humane and effective migration policy. Priority should be given to voluntary return programmes with strong reintegration support, in full respect of human dignity.

1.7.

The EESC recommends that any cooperation with third countries on migration be based on genuine partnerships, including legal migration opportunities, development support and strict human rights conditionality. Agreements must include enforceable safeguards, independent monitoring and suspension clauses in case of violations.

1.8.

The EESC urges the Commission to significantly strengthen the integration dimension of the strategy by allocating adequate financial resources, setting measurable objectives and promoting the active involvement of social partners, local authorities and civil society organisations.

1.9.

The EESC highlights the need to ensure that the increasing use of digitalisation and artificial intelligence in migration management is accompanied by robust safeguards. Technological tools must support, not replace, human decision-making and must never undermine fundamental rights or the principle of non-refoulement.

1.10.

The EESC expresses concern as to whether the implementation of the strategy will fully comply with the Union’s core values, in particular respect for fundamental rights, human dignity, solidarity and the rule of law. The Committee stresses that the credibility and legitimacy of EU migration policy will depend on the extent to which these principles are effectively upheld in practice.

2. Background

2.1.

Communication COM(2026) 45 final, adopted on 29 January 2026, presents the European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy. It is a strategic document on asylum and migration management that builds on the national strategies submitted by 25 Member States (1) and sets out the EU’s five-year priorities in these areas.

2.2.

The strategy focuses on five priorities: stepping up migration diplomacy, ensuring strong EU external borders, developing a firm, fair and adaptable asylum and migration system, making returns and readmissions more effective and promoting labour and talent mobility to boost the EU’s competitiveness.

2.3.

The document has been drawn up in an EU political context marked by a shift towards tougher positions on the issue of migration, with the implementation of the 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum, the political weaponisation of the migration situation by the far right and growing pressure from Member States to strengthen border controls and speed up returns. The strategy aims to guide EU action over the next five years.

2.4.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), as the institutional representative of organised civil society and the European social partners, has been consulted on this communication. Over the years, the Committee has maintained a consistent and coherent position in favour of an EU migration policy that is effective, realistic, fair and fully compatible with fundamental rights and EU values.

3. General comments

3.1.

The EESC notes that the strategy uses language and structural logic that puts control management at the heart of the EU migration project. ‘Illegal’ migration is primarily presented as a challenge related to order, security and efficiency, rather than a complex human phenomenon that requires balanced, rights-based responses. The EESC stresses that migration policy should not be driven solely by security concerns and must reflect the multifaceted nature of migration as a social, economic and humanitarian phenomenon.

3.2.

The EESC notes a clear asymmetry between the space dedicated to control, containment and returns, on the one hand, and that dedicated to migration flow management, integration, inclusion, regular pathways and the protection of rights, on the other. This asymmetry is not just rhetoric: it is a precursor to political priorities and, ultimately, budgetary decisions.

3.3.

The EESC acknowledges that the strategy has positive aspects, such as an explicit reference to respecting the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a willingness to set up legal access routes, support for temporary protection for displaced Ukrainians and recognition of the need to improve national integration systems. However, the Committee believes that these aspects are overshadowed by the overriding aim of containment and control.

3.4.

The EESC warns that using artificial intelligence technologies and implementing large-scale digitalisation in border management and in asylum procedures, without sufficient safeguards, risks leading to automated decision-making systems that violate the right to individual assessment and the principle of non-refoulement. Technological efficiency is no substitute for procedural safeguards. Member States must be required to conduct thorough and individualised assessments of each person’s situation, even where the person concerned comes from a country designated as a safe country of origin, a safe first country of asylum or a safe third country. The EESC stresses the need for independent monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance at the EU external borders and the provision of legal aid for foreigners awaiting a decision on international protection, in line with the recommendations of the Pact on Migration and Asylum.

4. Observations on fundamental rights

4.1.

The EESC is concerned about how the strategy handles fundamental rights. While the strategy states that the measures it sets out respect the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Committee believes that this statement is a mere symbolic declaration of intent and does not translate into concrete, binding and independent monitoring and accountability mechanisms.

4.2.

The EESC is particularly concerned about the concept of ‘safe third country’ and the establishment of EU lists of safe countries of origin. These categories, adopted in December 2025, may lead to presumptions of inadmissibility that prevent a genuine assessment of individual protection needs, in breach of international law on refugees (2).

4.3.

The EESC seriously questions the ‘return hubs’ outside the EU provided for in the proposed Return Regulation (3). The idea of outsourcing the detention and management of returnees to third countries raises serious questions about how to ensure that human rights are respected and about the EU’s responsibility as guarantor of the rights of people under its effective jurisdiction. In this regard, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has already ruled on the Italian government’s ‘Albania model’, which has the same intention, in its judgment of 1 August 2025 (4).

4.4.

The EESC stresses that safeguarding the principle of non-refoulement is non-negotiable. However necessary it may be to speed up asylum procedures to make the system more efficient, this cannot be achieved at the expense of essential procedural safeguards, in particular effective judicial protection of the rights of foreign nationals, especially in the case of vulnerable people, unaccompanied minors and victims of persecution.

4.5.

The EESC calls for all agreements with third countries on outsourcing, migration cooperation and readmission to include binding human rights clauses, independent monitoring mechanisms and the possibility of immediate suspension in the event of non-compliance. Migration diplomacy cannot be built on violations of rights, or on maintaining silence about such violations.

4.6.

The EESC points out that, under Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the right to seek asylum (international protection) is a right afforded to all foreign nationals. Migration law and policy, whether at EU or Member State level, must therefore not be based on the systematic deprivation of this right for migrants, even if it is intended to be temporary or limited in a territorial sense. The EESC notes that depriving migrants of the right to seek asylum upon arrival in the EU effectively transforms refugee migration into irregular migration.

5. Criticism of the focus on returns

5.1.

The EESC strongly criticises the central role returns play in the strategy. The rate of effective returns is held up as the prime indicator of the success of the EU’s migration policy, when it should be a tool of last resort as part of a realistic, effective, comprehensive, humane and coherent policy.

5.2.

The EESC points out that the assessment the document uses as a basis – that only a quarter of the people ordered to leave the EU actually do so – cannot serve as automatic justification for tougher return policies. This statistic should be put in context, as it also reflects the existence of objective obstacles, such as lack of cooperation from third countries, a lack of documentation or non-compliance with the principle of non-refoulement in countries of origin.

5.3.

The EESC warns that the proposal for a common European system for returns, with a European Return Order and return hubs in third countries, represents a significant expansion of the EU’s coercive apparatus, the impact of which on the rights of the people affected has not been properly assessed.

5.4.

It is concerning that explicit mention is made of calling into question trade agreements with third countries that do not cooperate in administrative return processes when it comes to readmitting foreign nationals who are staying irregularly. The EESC recognises that the use of negative conditionality in the field of economic cooperation is not new but believes that, unacceptably, it is presented almost as a threat to the EU’s trading partners in this proposal.

5.5.

The EESC believes that the resources invested in speeding up and expanding return mechanisms should be complemented by equivalent investment in regularising, integrating and including those who have de facto resided in the EU for years. A policy obsessed with returns entails human, social and economic costs that the strategy neither quantifies nor considers. The EESC stresses that a policy primarily focused on returns, without sufficient legal pathways, risks being both ineffective and unsustainable in the long term. Expanding regular migration channels is therefore essential to ensure a balanced and credible EU migration framework.

5.6.

The EESC stresses that voluntary return with proper support for reintegration is the only form of return compatible with full respect for human dignity. The strategy mentions voluntary returns, but its structural logic clearly points to mechanisms for accelerated forced return.

6. Lack of regular entry routes

6.1.

The EESC objects to the strategy’s concept of effectively reducing regular migration pathways to talent mobility and attracting skilled workers. Although the EESC agrees that this dimension is important for EU competitiveness, it believes that associating regular migration exclusively with the migration of talent is a major conceptual and political mistake.

6.2.

The EESC points out that the vast majority of people who migrate do so for various reasons: for work at all skill levels, for family, for humanitarian reasons or for better life chances. A policy that only opens up regular pathways for skilled talent is an exclusionary policy that pushes others towards irregular pathways and enhances the risk of human trafficking.

6.3.

The EESC stresses that, although there is some legitimacy in using migration as a tool of economic competitiveness, this cannot be the only or main benchmark framework for migration policy. People are not just production factors, and migration policy cannot be reduced to an exercise in managing human resources.

6.4.

The EESC calls for the strategy to incorporate regular pathways for labour migration in sectors with a persistent and recurring labour shortage at all skill levels, strong family reunification mechanisms as a fundamental right, extended humanitarian admission programmes beyond strict resettlement, and specific pathways for vulnerable groups.

6.5.

The EESC considers that the measures outlined in point 6.4 should be complemented by concrete EU level instruments to expand regular migration pathways. This could include schemes for the admission of workers across different skill levels, simplified family reunification procedures, and pilot partnerships with third countries combining legal migration opportunities with voluntary return mechanisms.

6.6.

The EESC pointed out that the Strategy does not include or refer to other legal or regular pathways of entry or to relevant aspects of labour migration management (5), such as training in countries of origin, the role of social partners, the alignment of professional qualifications, or the harmonisation of procedures on residence and work permits to make them accessible to a wider range of profiles.

6.7.

The EESC emphasises that legal migration pathways must be accompanied by robust safeguards against labour exploitation, social dumping and undeclared work, safeguarding working conditions and ensuring equal treatment and equal pay for equal work.

7. Integration and inclusion neglected

7.1.

The EESC considers integration and inclusion to be the strategy’s Achilles heel. Despite formal references to its importance, integration is clearly treated as subsidiary to the priorities of control and return, in terms of both how the strategy develops its arguments and the concrete political commitments it makes.

7.2.

The EESC points out that a sustainable migration policy is above all a successful integration policy. Migrants settling in the EU must be able to access the labour market, education, healthcare and social services on an equal footing. Integration is not just the duty of migrants, as stated in the strategy, but also – and primarily – the active responsibility of host societies and their institutions. Given that integration falls within the remit of the Member States, the EESC believes there should be strong support and encouragement from the Commission for integration and inclusion measures. Particular attention should be paid to the recognition of qualifications, language training and access to lifelong learning, enabling migrants to fully participate in the labour market and contribute to the economic and social development of their host communities.

7.3.

The EESC is concerned that the strategy does not provide for specific mechanisms to address the situation of people staying irregularly who have been living in the EU for years and who often entered legally but lost their legal status as a result of cumbersome legalisation procedures. The lack of any reference to regularisation pathways, including in cases where the migrant can prove that they have put down roots, constitutes a serious policy shortcoming with enormous human and social consequences. The EESC calls on the European Commission to encourage the Member States to facilitate legalisation procedures for migrants with an established work history.

7.4.

The EESC stresses the importance of actively involving social partners, namely trade unions and employers’ organisations, and civil society organisations, particularly those led by migrants and refugees, in developing, implementing and evaluating integration policies. Integration is not an administrative process, but rather a social one.

7.5.

Particular attention should be paid to women, children, persons with disabilities and victims of trafficking, whose specific protection and integration needs require targeted measures. The EESC calls for gender-sensitive, child-centred and disability-inclusive approaches in migration and integration policies, including access to education, healthcare, social services, accessible infrastructure and protection against exploitation, discrimination and violence.

7.6.

The EESC calls for a substantially higher budget allocation for integration policy in the 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework (MFF), with measurable objectives, independent monitoring indicators and mechanisms for accountability to the European Parliament and civil society.

7.7.

The EESC emphasises that the fight against racism, xenophobia and discrimination is an inseparable component of any policy for genuine integration. The strategy does not delve deeply enough into this problem, which affects the daily lives of millions of migrants and people with a migrant background in the EU.

8. The risk associated with outsourcing migration diplomacy

8.1.

The EESC has serious reservations about the migration diplomacy model proposed in the strategy. Strengthening agreements with non-EU countries – making trade, development aid and visas conditional on cooperation on returns and border control – means subordinating the EU’s other policy objectives to the migration containment agenda.

8.2.

The EESC warns that outsourcing border control to third countries with limited institutional capacities and poor human rights records risks leading to serious violations of migrants’ rights outside the scope of EU judicial review.

8.3.

The EESC believes that cooperation with third countries on migration could be legitimate and beneficial if it is based on a genuine partnership approach that includes investment in development, the opening up of legal migration pathways and strict respect for human rights. Cooperation based solely on control and containment is simply unacceptable.

8.4.

The EESC criticises the fact that the Global Europe instrument provided for under the 2028-2034 MFF reinforces the trend towards financial institutionalisation of outsourcing, making the delegation of migration control to third countries a permanent, structural pillar of EU migration governance.

Brussels, 15 July 2026.

The President

of the European Economic and Social Committee

Séamus BOLAND

(1) Twenty-five Member States have submitted their national strategies to the European Commission. Denmark is exempt from the obligation to submit such a document, and Hungary has formally communicated its decision not to submit one.

(2) Safe countries package (OJ C, C/2026/71, 30.1.2026, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/71/oj).

(3) OJ C, C/2026/33, 16.1.2026, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/33/oj.

(4) See the judgment at https://curia.europa.eu/site/upload/docs/application/pdf/2025-08/cp250103en.pdf.

(5) OJ C, C/2025/4204, 20.8.2025, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/4204/oj.

ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/5103/oj

ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)

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