BRUSSELS, June 13 -- The European Union's Migration and Asylum Pact took full legal effect on Friday, converting into binding law the largest hardening of the continent's asylum system in a generation, and the system's shared database malfunctioned on its first day, a small failure that captured the gap between the ambition announced in Brussels and the machinery meant to deliver it.

The Pact, agreed in 2024 and phased in since, now applies across the bloc as a single regime. Migrants entering irregularly face mandatory identity and security screening of up to seven days at the border, followed for many by a fast-track border procedure that compresses the asylum examination into an expedited process with fewer safeguards, and, for those ...