Thoughtfully deployed, digital technologies could represent a key way to support implementation of the EU New Pact on Migration and Asylum

BRUSSELS — What seemed close to impossible in recent years—an EU-wide agreement on migration—is now likely to become reality, with the New Pact on Migration and Asylum in the last stages of negotiation and hoped-for approval before European elections next June. Yet even if the pact is finalized, it must pass another test before policymakers can claim victory: translation of the complex legal construct into something that works in practice and can withstand spikes in migrant arrivals and other challenges.

Digital technologies, already increasingly used in European migration and asylum systems, could be leveraged to support the pact’s implementation. The stakes for implementation could not be higher, given asylum seeker and migrant inflows at levels unseen since 2015-16, the arrival of more than 4 million displaced Ukrainians and soaring political tensions around migration, as a Migration Policy Institute Europe policy brief published today outlines.

What role could digital technologies play in the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum? examines the role for digital tools in three key areas: facilitating the relocation of asylum seekers and refugees among Member States as envisioned by the pact, supporting the return and reintegration of migrants determined not to have a right to stay and screening new arrivals and processing (some) asylum claims at the border—one of the pact’s most complex and hotly debated elements. The brief also discusses the broader implications of digitalization in migration and asylum systems and reflects on how policymakers can set appropriate safeguards to ensure responsible use of new technologies.

While the migration field as a whole has traditionally been slow to adopt digital technologies, tools such as online case management systems, biometrics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are increasingly being used. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum offers an opportunity to tap more fully into the potential of digital technologies when implementing the new legal framework, write MPI Europe analysts Lucía Salgado and Hanne Beirens.

The brief cautions, though, that policymakers will need to test any new tools carefully and weigh the potential benefits and risks, given the potential for data security issues and unchecked errors in decision-making caused by biases engrained in algorithms, among other challenges.

To ensure the responsible use of new technologies, policymakers, civil servants and others involved in digitalization efforts will need to judiciously steer their adoption and course correct as needed, including by:

• Developing appropriate governance frameworks to regulate aspects such as data protection, oversight and accountability. The provisionally agreed EU AI Act, which would be the world’s first comprehensive AI law, would be a first step in this direction.
• Creating a strategic vision for the use of new technologies in migration and asylum systems. Such a strategy could help policymakers identify priority areas for the use of new technologies and lay out principles behind the development of any digital tool, such as the protection of personal data or interoperability with existing tools.
• Fostering co-creation between migration and digital experts. This would help create a resilient digital infrastructure and avoid private companies steering digitalization efforts, while including end users in design and monitoring would help ensure that new digital tools are responding to needs on the ground.
• Striking the right balance between standardization and flexibility. This will be particularly important when a tool will be used by several Member States within different legal and operational contexts.

"Operationalizing the pact, once approved, will be highly challenging in a context of widespread capacity constraints. Digital technologies could ease this process," Salgado and Beirens write. "But for their promise to become reality, policymakers will need to actively guide their development and build in strong safeguards to mitigate the risks associated with their use—or they could end up doing more harm than good for both EU migration and asylum systems and people on the move."

Read the policy brief here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/digital-technologies-eu-pact-migration.

And for more of MPI Europe’s work, visit www.mpieurope.org.