Pact on Migration and Asylum 2024: Compliance of Border Procedures with the Requirements of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

The subject of the article is the compatibility of the new procedural mechanisms introduced by the Pact on Migration and Asylum of 2024 with the absolute guarantees of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights. The study aims to determine whether the sequence of procedures provided for in the Pact – "screening – border procedure – return procedure" – creates a systemic risk of displacing individual legal assessments through preliminary administrative filtering. Special attention is given to the impact of extended border procedures and shortened screening times on the implementation of the principle of non-refoulement, ensuring individual risk assessments, and applicants’ access to effective legal remedies. The article also examines the implications of the reform for vulnerable categories of applicants, including victims of torture and unaccompanied minors, as well as the importance of timely identification of vulnerability in determining applicable procedural guarantees. A comparative legal analysis of secondary EU law acts is applied in their systemic connection with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. It is established that the extended border procedures and compressed screening times are structurally incompatible with the requirement for individualized risk assessment, which is consistently reinforced in the practices of both courts. It is shown that the right to appeal with suspensive effect, as a necessary element of the principle of non-refoulement, is threatened under conditions of permissible twelve-week detention at the border with limited access to legal assistance. It has been revealed that vulnerable categories of applicants bear a disproportionate burden from the reform: the screening times are objectively insufficient for timely identification of victims of torture and unaccompanied minors, as a result of which vulnerability as a legally significant factor influencing the applicability of procedures is considered too late. It is concluded that the criterion for the viability of the Pact should not be the declared balance between managed migration and the protection of human rights, but the actual compatibility of specific procedural mechanisms with the absolute guarantees of Article 4 and Article 19(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.