The European institutions have little to say about the immigrant registrationa question that falls under the competence of the member states and later of the town halls which are the administrative body responsible for operationalizing the recognition of the rights and duties of immigrants and promoting their integration into local society.
No clause in the new asylum and immigration pact modifies that the registry is a national competence
According to European sources consulted by this newspaper, no clause in the new asylum and immigration pact, which the Council and European Parliament are finalizing after the political agreement closed after months of negotiations at the end of last December, modifies the fact that it is a national competence.
The new asylum and immigration pact, agreed by Council and European Parliament negotiators at the end of last year and still to be formally approved, is intended to manage and normalize immigration in the long term, providing certainty, clarity and decent conditions to people arriving in the European Union, but it does not regulate the registration policy.
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For example, it establishes uniform rules for the identification of immigrants from third countries arriving in the EU external borders to ensure effective control, strengthens the Eurodac database to improve information on the movements of irregular migrants within the EU and establishes new rules on asylum procedures and response in case of migration crisis caused by massive arrivals (such as those experienced in the Canary Islands), so that the affected countries receive solidarity from the rest of the European countries or avoid instrumentalization. That is, it focuses on offering a common approach regarding the migration policy management but it does not regulate the response that local authorities must give.
A study commissioned by the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee a year and a half ago recognizes that the access of immigrants in an irregular situation to social rights and their protection has generated controversy in numerous member states in the past. This is the case of the provision called “bed, bath and bread” that threatened at the time to break up the government coalition in the Netherlands due to the controversy it aroused between the central government and the city councils, those in charge of managing its application.