Abstract The Screening Regulation entailing a ›pre-entry screening‹ at the EU’s external borders is part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System concluded in 2024. This article analyses the discursive strategies within the initial Screening Proposal to examine how the screening procedure is legitimised. Furthermore, the analysis engages with the different institutional positions regarding the question of entry to the EU territory. I then address key aspects of the proposal that remain part of the final legislative text, as well as relevant changes during the reform process. Moreover, I discuss how the screening procedure affects individuals’ fundamental rights, with a focus on the ›fiction of non-entry‹: a person physically present on a country’s territory is considered to be legally present only after official authorisation. This leads to a differential legal inexistence that I argue needs to be understood as part of the socio-political imaginations that feature implicitly in the proposal and condemn people to »political inexistence« (Di Cesare 2021: 155, translation HS). Finally, I argue that the analysed discursive legitimisations contribute to a normalisation of these denials of existence.