LIBE votes on €27.4bn EU border and asylum funds, 19 Nov

On Thursday 19 November the European Parliament's civil liberties committee votes on how member states may spend €27.4 billion of EU border and asylum money from 2028, and on opening talks with the Council.

The two draft reports pull in different directions. Karlo Ressler (EPP, Croatia) wants the border fund to pay for equipment, infrastructure and IT systems, and for work in third countries. Ana Catarina Mendes (S&D, Portugal) wants the asylum fund ring-fenced for asylum systems and integration inside the Union.

Two reports, two votes each

The committee (LIBE) meets for half an hour from 09:30 in Brussels. Its draft agenda lists the same two decisions for each file: adoption of the draft report, then a vote on the decision to enter interinstitutional negotiations. If both pass, the rapporteur takes the committee's text into talks with the Council.

The files are the Commission's proposals of 16 July 2025 for the next long-term budget:

• Union support for the Schengen area, European integrated border management and the common visa policy, 2025/0541(COD);
• Union support for asylum, migration and integration, 2025/0540(COD).

Both succeed funds that stand alone today. Member states would spend the money through their National and Regional Partnership Plans, the single plans that also cover cohesion and agriculture. Member states prepare those plans, the Commission assesses them and the Council adopts them. Part of the money would go through an EU Facility.

The numbers

The Commission proposes €15,396,750,000 for borders and visas and €11,975,428,500 for asylum, migration and integration, both in current prices for 2028–2034.

Mendes's draft report raises the asylum envelope by 10% to €13,172,971,350. Ressler's draft report leaves the border figure blank, to be filled from Parliament's interim report on the long-term budget.

The budgets committee has already voted. On 15 July it backed €17,117,154,000 for the border fund by 24 votes to 5, and €13,313,431,000 for the asylum fund by 23 votes to 4 with one abstention.

Ressler's draft carries 17 amendments and Mendes's 41. Members tabled a further 189 on the border file and 308 on the asylum file.

Ressler: capacity at the border, and beyond it

Ressler's report adds a list of what the border fund may buy. It covers surveillance and communication systems, infrastructure at crossing points and along external borders, "fixed, mobile and deployable assets", large-scale IT systems and screening.

A new article allows support "for actions in or in relation to third countries". Two more amendments exempt the fund from the horizontal principles in Articles 5, 6 and 7 of the proposed Performance Regulation and remove its spending from the base of the climate and environment target.

The report also replaces "irregular migration" with "illegal migration" in the recitals and in the fund's objectives, and adds a recital on "swift, efficient and sustainable returns". In his explanatory statement Ressler welcomes an overall allocation for migration, borders and security "three times higher than under the current MFF".

Mendes: minimum shares and a 5% ceiling abroad

Mendes rewrites the asylum fund's objectives. Legal migration and integration move up to second place; return and readmission drop to third. Her justification for deleting one Commission phrase reads: "Weaponisation is not a term that we recognise when speaking about human beings."

Her report then fixes how the money is split:

• at least 20% for the Common European Asylum System and at least 20% for legal migration and integration, in national plans and in the EU Facility;
• no more than 5% for actions in third countries, in each member state's plan and in the Facility;
• 5% of the Facility's home-affairs allocation for integration work by local and regional authorities.

She also sets an EU co-financing rate of 80%, rising to 90% for listed actions under the integration objective and to 100% for actions financed through the Facility. The Commission's general rates, her statement says, are "entirely unrealistic" for small civil society organisations.

Who it affects

Suppliers of surveillance equipment and border IT systems would see their product categories listed as eligible if Ressler's list survives.

Municipalities and NGOs that run reception and integration projects depend on the co-financing rates and on the minimum shares. The Commission's asylum text asks only that the split between objectives be "proportionate to the identified challenges and needs".

The asylum proposal pays member states per person: €10,000 for each person resettled or relocated and €12,000 for a relocated unaccompanied minor. The border proposal reserves up to €450 million for Lithuania's Special Transit Scheme.

Where it could break

The border report's third-country article and the asylum report's 5% ceiling answer the same question in opposite ways. Members have tabled 497 further amendments across the two files, and the agenda does not show which compromises go to the vote.

The envelopes are also provisional. Ressler's own amendment ties the border figure to Parliament's interim report on the 2028–2034 budget, file 2025/0571R(APP).

What to watch

• 19 November, 09:30: the votes on both reports and on the two negotiating decisions.
• 23–26 November: the Strasbourg plenary, the first session after the committee decisions.
• 7 December: LIBE's next meeting.

Follow both files on PoliData.