FRA 2026
21
April
2026

Migration and fundamental rights - Bulletin 1/2026

From 2015 to 2023, FRA regularly published bulletins on fundamental rights issues related to migration and asylum. As part of the EU's 2024 Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, FRA is now restarting this reporting ahead of the June 2026 implementation of the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. This first bulletin in the new series takes stock of the situation of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees as of March 2026. It looks at key developments between January 2025 and the end of March 2026, as well as ongoing problems and new areas of concern.

From 2015 to 2023, following a large number of arrivals in the EU, the European Union (EU) Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) regularly issued bulletins on fundamental rights challenges affecting migrants, asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection across the EU. These periodic updates provided timely evidence on displacement-related fundamental rights issues and developments in Member States. FRA published a final overview in May 2023: Asylum and migration: Progress achieved and remaining challenges.

Article 10 (2) (h) of the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (EU) 2024/1351 (AMMR) envisages that the European Commission takes FRA’s quarterly bulletins on migration into account when assessing the overall migratory situation, or evaluating whether a Member State is under migratory pressure.

Better understanding of fundamental rights trends, persistent issues and challenges will support the EU and its Member States as they prepare for the June 2026 implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum. FRA, therefore, is resuming the publication of periodic updates. This first bulletin of the new series revisits where the fundamental rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees stand in March 2026. It describes developments from January 2025 until the end of March 2026 as well as persistent issues, and emerging concerns. Some sections include contextual information which predates 2025.

For this bulletin, as in the past, FRA drew on its own data and expertise and used its multidisciplinary research network Franet for further desk research as well as interviews and written consultations with various stakeholders. Depending on the Member State, these included immigration and asylum authorities, ombuds institutions or national human rights institutions, international organisations and relevant civil society actors. FRA also used findings from its own field missions to Member States.

FRA shared the draft bulletins with national human rights institutions, through their European Network ENNHRI as well as with Member States, relevant EU agencies and the European Commission through the Migration Preparedness and Crisis Blueprint network, integrating their comments as appropriate.

In addition, FRA tested for the first time different general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) tools, namely Perplexity and Chat GPT, to scan publicly available documents. FRA checked the information generated by these AI tools with respect to its correctness and sources, analysing it alongside more traditional sources of data and information. References to external sources are provided through embedded hyperlinks using phrasing which enables readers to identify and locate them. Hyperlinks were accessed on 30 March 2026.

The bulletin covers 13 thematic areas, each of which starts with a short introduction presenting the EU legal and policy framework.

Future FRA bulletins will address also the fundamental rights risks and opportunities of using artificial intelligence to support decision-making in asylum and immigration procedures. New FRA research is examining how AI-driven technologies are used in practice, assessing their impact on fundamental rights, to provide guidance to support relevant authorities to mitigate related fundamental rights risks.