If crossings fall but deaths remain high, we need to rethink what we call success.

There are texts that first sit like a headline, and then slowly turn into a regime. The EU Migration and Asylum Pact has been standing at the edge of that transformation for a while. It was put forward in 2020; a political agreement was reached at the end of 2023; and it was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in spring 2024 (European Commission, 2026a). It entered into force in June 2024; and after a two year transition period, on 12 June 2026, the arrangement on paper will become a rhythm of implementation (European Commission, 2026a). That date matters because what we are discussing is no longer a draft. Words like border screening, accelerated procedures, responsibility-sharing, and the external dimension will become the language of an order on the ground. That is why, in this issue, I want to look less at what the Pact promises and more at what we will count as success. Because sometimes the most decisive feature of a policy is not what it says, but what it makes measurable and what it renders invisible.

On paper, the EU Migration and Asylum Pact carries two promises at once: control and protection. This dual promise also summarizes the balance Europe has been trying to strike on migration for a long time. Yet existing research shows that in practice this balance often tilts in favor of control, while the language of protection is increasingly articulated alongside risk management and regimes of containment at the border (Gambazza, 2024; Stępka, 2023; Uriarte, 2022). Although the Pact is presented as a fresh start, many analyses emphasize that in practice it deepens the EU’s migration security continuum and leaves humanitarian elements weak (Stępka, 2023; Uriarte, 2022).

The most disturbing test of this framework appears in the Mediterranean. On the one hand, detections of crossings can decline; on the other, death rates can remain high. The literature has long argued that this coexistence is not accidental: tightening borders tends not to stop flows so much as reroute them, increase the costs of movement, and push death into more invisible spaces (Prieto-Flores, 2025; Steinhilper & Gruijters, 2018; Lorenzini & Tazzioli, 2020). This brings us directly to the question of success metrics. The moment we define success through crossing and detection numbers, we push out of measurement where risk is transferred—and who pays the price (Heller & Pécoud, 2020; Kovras & Robins, 2016). Even if choosing a metric looks like a technical detail, it is in fact a political choice that determines which suffering will be made visible.

The Pact’s external dimension is one of the key mechanisms behind this distribution of risk. Formal or informal arrangements with third countries can push border management outward geographically while moving responsibility into more legally ambiguous spaces. This process is associated with the de facto externalization of asylum procedures, the legal blurring of responsibility, and the erosion of certain protection standards (Marcheva, 2025; Ovacık & Crépeau, 2025; Potyomkina, 2025). Externalization often reduces movement less than it changes the geography of movement; when risk is pushed beyond the EU’s border, it does not disappear it simply becomes less visible (Marcheva, 2025; Steinhilper & Gruijters, 2018; Vella, 2024). In particular, for women and other vulnerable groups, externalization is discussed as a mechanism that can intensify risks of trafficking, sexual violence, and structural inequalities (Vella, 2024).

Another pillar of the border regime concerns how search-and-rescue capacity is built or withdrawn. Some studies stress that changes in search-and-rescue regimes can coincide with outcomes such as fewer detections and higher death rates, producing an order in which losses become less visible (Prieto-Flores, 2025; Lorenzini & Tazzioli, 2020). Death counts now circulate not only through civil society counter-statistics, but also in the discourse of international and intergovernmental actors as a performance metric; yet this circulation can also be entangled with a humanitarian border narrative that renders political responsibility less visible (Heller & Pécoud, 2020; Kovras & Robins, 2016). The death data themselves become politicized: counting makes visible, but visibility does not always translate into accountability (Heller & Pécoud, 2020; Pécoud, 2019).

All of this reminds us that the Pact is not merely a technical arrangement: it can also be read as a continuation of a crisis-mode logic of governance. The aim of crisis mode is often to restore a sense of control; its tools can include accelerated procedures, surveillance technologies, and return practices (Sahin-Mencutek et al., 2022; Stępka, 2023). Critiques along this line emphasize the risk of erosion in protection standards and the normalization of exceptions in relation to rights (Stępka, 2023; Uriarte, 2022).

At this point, the question of success metrics becomes not a technical question but an ethical one. Normative scholarship on migration policy dilemmas points to real tensions among competing moral aims protection, self-governance, equality and warns of the risks of reductionist positions that collapse the debate into only control or only humanitarianism (Bauböck et al., 2022; Brock, 2021). For this reason, reading falling crossings as automatic success can be analytically and ethically insufficient. Declines in crossings can occur alongside shifts toward more lethal routes, the invisibilization of losses, and the displacement of responsibility into legally ambiguous spaces (Prieto-Flores, 2025; Steinhilper & Gruijters, 2018; Marcheva, 2025).

I want to close this issue with one question. As the Pact comes into application, which metric will define success: crossing numbers, detection numbers, faster procedures or the total of deaths and rights violations? Whether a policy truly works requires a clear and ethical reckoning with which metric we choose to prioritize.

Current report note

In its progress assessment dated 8 May 2026, the European Commission emphasizes that the EU Migration and Asylum Pact will enter into application on 12 June 2026 at the end of the two-year transition period, and that Member States’ implementation preparations are continuing within a common plan (European Commission, 2026a). The language of the report suggests that success will be defined largely through operational capacity, faster procedures, and effective management. This makes the critical question more visible as the Pact takes effect: which metric will define successd etection and processing numbers, or the total of deaths and rights violations?

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