The new center at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport is designed to process people who apply for asylum upon landing at the airport, adhering to EU-wide accelerated asylum procedures that enter into effect today.

Two further such facilities have already been opened at the airports of Frankfurt and Munich, with further such facilities planned at other locations in Germany.

Under the new EU laws, Germany must provide a minimum of 374 places for the new external border procedures.

Since Germany does not have any external borders and is only surrounded by other EU+ countries and Switzerland, the new regimen will only apply at airports and seaports, where people will be treated as not entering the European Union until they pass passport control.

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Accelerated procedures for certain applicants

According to the new rules, people who request asylum at the bloc's external borders will from now on first be screened for their nationality; if they come from 'safe' countries which generally have a low rate of receiving protection (below 20 percent), they will automatically be sent to these kinds of facilities for expedited processing.

If their asylum application ultimately does fail, their deportation will also be streamlined, with the whole procedure legally mandated to take place within 12 weeks from the application date.

These new guidelines will also apply to people who provided false information about their identity, regardless of what country they come from, as well as for people who are flagged during the initial screening as a potential security risk.

Those coming from a country with a higher overall chance of being granted asylum will still be allowed to enter, after which a regular asylum procedure will be carried out.

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A unified asylum system across Europe

The changes are part of the upgrades to the EU's Common European Asylum System (CEAS) under the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. 

The main objectives of these reforms are to introduce uniform procedures across EU member states to streamline and speed up asylum matters across the bloc. To this end, more and more asylum procedures are expected to be handled at the EU's external borders, i.e. before people enter the bloc.

To achieve all this, the EU is in the process of rolling out unified IT systems, which will record all personal information of applicants including biometric data; a case opened in any EU country will be visible to border and asylum agents working in any member state.

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The changes also include the introduction of a new solidarity mechanism, which is designed to alleviate some of the burden of countries at the forefront of receiving large volumes of migrants, in particular Greece, Italy and Spain.

This particular aspect of the reforms however has been the most divisive, as individual member states will be able to excuse themselves from partaking in the solidarity mechanism under an opt-out clause. In exchange, they are expected to pay a fine for each case they reject.

For the time being, Germany remains exempted from the solidarity mechanism, as it has welcomed large numbers of asylum seekers in recent years.

Read AlsoThe EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Questions answered

with dpa