The Migration Policy debates

Current discussions are considering how migration could help to achieve Europe’s social and economic goals and address its labour market situation and demographic imbalances.

Following the Amsterdam Treaty, policy initiatives taken by the European institutions increasingly affect national policies. Therefore, in order to be effective both at the national and European level, non-governmental actors should also consult and co-operate on the European level and add a European dimension to the work they are doing on the national level.

European co-operation in the migration field is rather limited and is often confined to international organisations that have a wider brief than migration and have set up a migration secretariat (as is the case with trade unions and churches). The European Migration Policy Dialogue will step into this lacuna and promote European co-operation among a variety of key stakeholders.

The European Migration Policy Dialogue will monitor and exchange information, and promote and facilitate debates on policy developments in the migration field and their European dimension.

This includes policies in the following fields:

• Migration management, including rules for admission for employed and self-employed persons, students and other persons, family reunion, border control and visa policies, economic and demographic needs assessments, etc.
• Immigrant integration, including secure residence rights, equal treatment and mobility, acquisition of nationality, anti-discrimination and diversity.
• Relations between source and sending countries, including brain drain/gain, return and circular migration, readmission.

Migration policies are designed parallel to, but separately from, asylum policies that are based on humanitarian principles embodied in international conventions. The European Migration Policy Dialogue will deal with asylum as well as with issues related to anti-discrimination only to the extent that these issues have a bearing on migration. The partners recognise that there is a well-developed and long-standing tradition of organisations working together on asylum and anti-discrimination at the European level.