French bid to sink EU migration pact hits troubled waters

(CN) — Europe’s new migrant-sharing system got a boost Thursday when a top EU court adviser rejected a French-led effort to tear it apart.

Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta advised the Court of Justice of the European Union to reject a challenge brought by France’s National Assembly against the EU’s new asylum and migration rules, finding that lawmakers failed to show why a problem spanning multiple countries could be handled more effectively by governments acting separately.

France’s National Assembly is seeking to strike down the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, a key pillar of the EU’s migration pact adopted in May 2024. Lawmakers asked the Luxembourg-based court to scrap the law, or at least its solidarity mechanism, arguing that it forces countries to shoulder migration responsibilities that should remain under national control.

Ćapeta found part of the challenge inadmissible and rejected the rest as unfounded. Most of the arguments, she said, were directed at issues the court could not examine through this particular procedure, while the only claim that qualified ultimately failed.

“This is the first time, since its introduction by the Lisbon Treaty, that Article 8 of Protocol No. 2 has been used by a national parliament,” Ćapeta wrote, referring to a rarely used mechanism that lets national parliaments challenge EU laws they believe should be handled by member states instead.

The case was not the ruling French government’s doing. Instead, far-right politician Marine Le Pen and 87 members of French Parliament pushed the National Assembly to launch an unprecedented challenge, which French authorities were constitutionally obliged to forward to the EU court.

A spokesperson for the National Assembly, the lower chamber, declined to comment but confirmed the request originated with lawmakers from Le Pen’s National Rally party. Le Pen, one of France’s most prominent far-right politicians, is awaiting an appeal ruling expected before summer’s end in a separate case that could affect her eligibility to run in the 2027 presidential election.

The regulation forms part of the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, which is set to become fully operational on June 12. Countries facing heavy migration pressures can receive support from other member states through asylum-seeker relocations, financial contributions or operational assistance.

The mechanism was designed to address a longstanding complaint from countries at Europe’s external borders, which under the Dublin rules often ended up handling a disproportionate share of asylum claims.

French lawmakers argued the relocation system threatens national identity, public order and national security, imposes financial burdens and gives Brussels powers that EU treaties never intended.

Ćapeta said most of those complaints missed the narrow legal question before the court.

National parliaments can use this procedure only to argue that an issue should have been handled by individual countries rather than collectively at the EU level. They cannot use it to challenge whether the EU has the power to legislate in the area or whether the policy itself is a good idea.

Likewise, she said arguments about costs and burdens belong to a different legal debate than the one raised in this case.

That left a single question: Whether the EU actually needed to step in.

Ćapeta concluded that it did. Migration pressures, she wrote, cross national borders and affect multiple countries at once, making them difficult to solve through separate national responses.

“It is clear that actions taken by individual member states cannot satisfactorily reply to the need for a common EU approach to a common problem,” she quoted from the European Commission’s original proposal.

Elspeth Guild, a professor at the University of Liverpool and visiting professor at the College of Europe, said the opinion’s value extends well beyond migration. For national parliaments considering similar challenges, she said, it offers a rare roadmap for how this little-used procedure actually works.

What sets the opinion apart, in her view, is the level of scrutiny. Rather than simply accepting the EU institutions’ justification for acting at the European level, Ćapeta examined the evidence behind it. Guild said that approach could become an important reference point in future cases.

Then there is the comparison problem.

Francesco Maiani, a professor of European law at the University of Lausanne, said the opinion tackles several unresolved questions about the limits of parliamentary challenges to EU laws.

Most important, he said, is Ćapeta’s answer to what should count as the alternative to EU action. The comparison is not between EU action and governments teaming up outside the EU framework, but between EU action and countries acting alone. He called that reasoning particularly powerful and said he hopes the court adopts it.

As for the French case itself, Maiani was blunt. He described it as “more theatrical gesture than legal action proper,” arguing that once the inadmissible claims are removed, little remains beyond the idea that individual countries could manage the Europe-wide distribution of migration-related charges better than the EU, a position that “no reasonable person would take.”

He also rejected claims that the opinion was driven by politics, saying “not one line in the argumentation of the advocate general comes across as politically inspired” and describing it instead as a “scrupulous, prudent, logical” analysis grounded in sound legal reasoning.

Migration remains one of Europe’s most politically charged issues even as asylum numbers have fallen. Eurostat data show first-time asylum applications across the EU dropped about 27% in 2025, though Spain, Italy, France and Germany still received the bulk of claims. France alone recorded more than 116,000 first-time applications.

EU officials declined to comment on an ongoing judicial process.

Ćapeta recommended dismissing the action as “partly inadmissible and partly unfounded” and ordering the National Assembly to pay costs.

The court is not required to follow advocate generals’ recommendations, but it often does. A final ruling is expected in the coming months.

Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.