European Reintegration Networking

Reintegration Approaches and Policies on EU level 

Analysis and Recommendations

Discussions on the adjustment of asylum rights on EU Member States level and on approaches to support the integration of Non-EU-Migrants showed clearly that there will be a large number of migrants in the future who will get a residence permit only for a limited time.

For those people – especially war refugees and refused asylum seekers – it is of great evidence to use their stay in the host country for preparing new life perspectives to be realized after finally returning home.

Especially the migration streams of refugees from the Balkan countries demonstrated that a public opinion and policies on questions dealing with the reintegration of refugees in most cases is formed on a national basis in each EU Member State. Furthermore, reintegration is hardly seen as a part of the refugee problem.

Economic and income orientated dimensions of reintegration measures are still undervalued, also other effects e. g. on the social environment or aspects like xenophobia are not take into account sufficiently both in the receiving countries and in the countries of origin. If possible, aspects dealing with crisis prevention, conflict management, and peace building measures should be investigated more in the context of reintegration programmes and processes.

The project on hand aims on

• Investigating the status quo of handling reintegration problems as a part of migration policy in the different EU countries.
• Inquiring how the different EU countries handle questions of return and reintegration in connection with advisory offers for refugees.
• Researching programmes and activities in different countries and by different organisations targeting the support of return and reintegration and discussing the respective results and consequences.
• Bringing into contact persons with political responsibility, institutions and organisations in order to discuss their positions and exchange experience on a regional level (realization of four regional workshops) and publishing a regional report resp. country report.
• Developing transparency and exchange on reintegration approaches on EU level, furthermore presenting and discussing recommendations within the scope of an EU transnational conference.
• Elaborating a reader, which will distributed among institutions, organisations and other responsible bodies.
• Enabling the long-term use of the website www.reintegration.net for a pan-European exchange of information and ideas

Expected results of the operation

It will be achieved by the activities of the project that reintegration as well as integration of refugees is accepted as a part of the migration policy in the EU member countries.

By best-practise examples it will be proofed that refugees can be seen as personnel resources who can contribute to the economic stabilisation and to the reduction of conflict potentials in their home countries if they receive respective preparations before.

The current situation of approaches to questions of reintegration in the several EU Member States will be analysed including the domestic, foreign and development political aspects of the migration and refugee policy. Decision makers form politics, migrants advisory services, from education and economy will be included in the process of working out the analysis so that politically acceptable recommendations can be developed.

Potential partners for transnational EU projects will be identified and will get the chance to get to know each other and to coordinate their activities in regional workshops, on a transnational conference as well as through the website www.reintegration.net

A reintegration program (for a selected target group – according to the opinion and the choice of the project partners ) will be developed as a mode containing the following modules:

• preparation for reintegration in the host country
• implementation in the home country
• evaluation of sustainability

Summary implementation timetable for the operation

The project has a total duration of 12 months. The following steps are foreseen:

1. Research on past and ongoing programmes, documents, reports and impact analysis.

Research criteria:

• Escape respectively reasons for escape of the targeted groups
• Duration of stay in the receiving country
• Reasons and intentions of reintegration measures
• Targeted countries for reintegration measures and the impact on their situation being confronted with the return of migrants
• Planning, implementation and ex post support activities
• Intended effects and impacts
• Methodologies
• Methodology and results of impact evaluation
• Criteria for the sustainability and evaluation of the obtained results
• Structures with competences in decision making and implementation of reintegration measures; funding sources
• Financial models (e. g. advance payment of welfare benefits, pensions, etc.)
• Synergies and contradictions due to reintegration measures
• Bodies responsible; political and organisational framework or measures.

2. Preparation of a transnational conference (distribution of the report and the policy draft to the EU Member States). Realization of the transnational conference (3 days), where "best practice" models of each EU Member State are presented and disussed. Also, the regional / country reports and the policy paper will be discussed and approved in agreement with all participants of the conference. Because divergent opinions are likely to arise from the discussions, priority shall be given on "transparency and acceptance" before "reaching of consensus"

  Overview on the planned and realized workshops

3. The materials will be edited, completed and distributed

To guarantee a transparent discussion process, from the beginning all collected reports and other materials should be published in a homepage and a virtual discussion platform should be opened.

4. Final Report (PDF)