If you’re reading this, we hope it’s because you saw our posters as a part of the Transnational Day of Action against the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. Despite fierce criticism and grave concerns over human rights violations, the pact was voted in on April 10th, 2024. 

That very same day, as with many days since, NNK recorded a violent pushback story of a woman who was pushed back from Croatia to Bosnia with 5 others. The woman who shared her story with us told us that the police officers pushed her over a rock, so she broke her foot. When explaining in tears what happened and showing the officers her leg, one policeman said ‘I don’t care’ and insulted her. The group tried to claim asylum but the officers wouldn’t let them speak. The border police shot gunshots in the air, and said to her: “this one in the air, the next one on one of you”. The woman told us that she knew she had to run, that “‘we knew they were going to beat us again”. Since then, we have recorded countless more stories of beating, kicking, theft, sexual assault, degrading treatment, and violent pushbacks. This is what ‘managing migration’ looks like in Europe.

Officially, the pact will enter into application in June 2026. But our concerns for the implications of the pact run far deeper than legislation: it legitimises a culture of pushbacks, discrimination, racism, and arbitrary detention. That culture is not new, and those violences have been the backbone of fortress Europe for decades, but this pact made them law. 

In April 2024, we published our analysis of the pact, highlighting the clauses that were particularly concerning. The pact proposes legislative changes, such as ‘accelerated border procedures’ which omit legal safeguards and protections such as translation or vulnerability assessments. 

At the time of writing, we noted that even in the current system many people are denied those safeguards, and that in the 6 months prior to writing (October-April 2024) 25% of people who reported a violent pushback to us had been given no opportunity for a translator. In the last 6 months of 2024, this increased to 30% who had no access to a translator. This is one of the guarantees which the ‘accelerated’ border procedures of the pact plans to sacrifice. 

We have also noted that the use of detention during pushbacks has increased dramatically, rising from 23% of testimonies in the 6 months prior to the pact to 42% in the last 6 months. In our analysis of the pact, we raised concerns that the mandatory screening which the pact introduces would mean that de facto detention (detention without judicial or legal processes) would increase because of the mandatory ‘screening’ which states are forced to implement to stream people into one of two procedures: asylum or return.   

The pact has not even entered into force yet, but its influence is already clear. The pact legitimises, strengthens, and in some cases even mandates, an already existing culture of impunity and human rights abuses. By codifying pushbacks, arbitrary detention, and the erosion of legal safeguards, the EU sends a clear message: that the violence of fortress Europe is not just tolerated, but is encouraged. 

Violent border control is just as much an ideology as it is a policy, and having the EU’s backing has already had devastating effects in worsening the racism and violence of European border forces. That is the true danger of the pact: It is not only a shift in legislation but a consolidation of the ideology that has guided European migration policy for too long. European border forces have never needed permission to act with brutality, but now they have justification. 

So what can we do about it?

We continue our work to expose, disrupt, and counter the culture of impunity that the pact reinforces. Documentation remains one of our strongest tools, using every piece of evidence and every testimony we can to chip away at the EU’s narrative that the pact’s measures are orderly, necessary, and humane. 

We will continue to bring these cases before courts and get international publicity. We will continue to win cases and stop deportations, to challenge racist narratives, and to fight borders.  

We invite you to join us, support us, or any of the organisations working to dismantle Europe’s violent border regime.