The European Union is preparing to roll out one of the most far-reaching overhauls of its migration and visa policy in decades. Brussels presents it as a shift toward “order, security and efficiency.” Yet a closer reading of the new Migration and Asylum Pact and the first-ever EU Visa Strategy points to a less ambitious reality: not an end to mass immigration, but better tools to administer it, channel it and, to a large extent, legalise it.
The new framework, due to apply from June 12, 2026, introduces mandatory and accelerated procedures at the EU’s external borders, extensive use of biometric databases, and an explicit link between visa policy and cooperation on returns by third countries. But it does not question the overall volume of arrivals or the structural logic of migration attraction. Instead, it treats migration pressure as a permanent feature of EU policy.
The sharpest criticism comes from governments and analysts who argue that Brussels confuses administrative control with genuine control of migration flows. Balázs Orbán, political director to Hungary’s prime minister, accused the Commission of repeating the same logic it has followed for more than a decade: treating migration “not as a security or sovereignty issue, but as a manageable phenomenon and an economic policy tool.”
Orbán argued that the new Pact rests on a flawed assumption—that the system can be fixed through more procedures and more legal pathways, when the problem is structural. “Illegal entry alone triggers lengthy legal processes that keep people on EU territory for years, even when they ultimately receive no protection,” he wrote. The outcome, he warned, is not less migration but a redistribution of its consequences among member states.