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In June 2026 the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will come into effect for all EU member states – and for those who are still members, that means that the Solidarity Mechanism will come into effect along with it. But what is the Solidarity Mechanism, what does it do, and what does it mean for the UK?
Well, the reason and purpose of the Solidarity Mechanism is to acknowledge, recognise and respond to the now decades-long influx of illegal migration into Europe that has primarily impacted those member states on the receiving end of the initial entry, with territorial borders on the south. These countries have the administrative burden of dealing with the migrants, as well as the responsibility of finding accommodation at least in the short to medium term.
The Solidarity Mechanism looks to try and share out this burden across member states, through reallocation of arrivals to spread the administrative load. The target is to share out a minimum of 30,000 migrant arrivals each year, from those arrival countries in the south to other nations within the EU that are not as exposed.
For 2026, the first year the mechanism comes into play, 21,000 migrants will either be reallocated to other member states, or those member states will have to provide financial support of 20,000EUR per head if they do not wish to have the migrants reallocated to them.
So where does the United Kingdom come into this, seeing as the UK left the EU?
Well with the Labour Party in turmoil and potential leadership candidates jockeying for position, some are restarting the Brexit argument again to try and seal support from those who wish to rejoin the EU. One aspect absent from that jockeying for position though, is the actual cost of rejoining and accepting all EU rules – one such rule being the EU Pact on Migration.
The “fair share” calculation used in the Solidarity Mechanism, uses a combination of population size and GDP to attribute migrants to other member states. Were the UK to rejoin the EU and so be a part of this calculation, the UK would be responsible for taking 15% of the migrant allocation each year – or paying the support fees per head for not doing so.
In the June 2026 allocation, were the UK to be a part of it, the EU would be insisting on the UK taking an additional 3,150 migrants that have arrived in Southern Europe, or paying the EU 63,000,000EUR to avoid it.
In 2023 roughly 380,000 irregular migrants were detected as having arrived into the EU. Were the UK to have its “fair share” of these allocated to it, as the Solidarity Mechanism is intended to do when up and running, the UK would have to take responsibility for an additional 57,000 migrants, or pay 1.1 Billion EUR. For a single year of arrivals.
