Ministers praten over opzetten van partnerschappen voor migratie (en)
On 4th November this year, the Second Ministerial Conference inaugurating a successive stage of the Prague Process is being held in Poznan.
Participants of the conference are ministers in charge of migration issues and/or their representatives from the European Union Member States, countries of South-Eastern Europe, the western part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Southern Caucuses, Central Asia, Russia and Turkey.
An Action Plan for 2012-2016 serving to improve migration cooperation in the area encompassed by the Process will be presented to the ministers for endorsement.
Following its official acceptance at the conference, from January 2012 this plan will enter the implementation phase through the introduction of a number of multilateral projects, whose partners and main beneficiaries are to be the CIS countries, Western Balkans and Central Asia. In accordance with the framework set forth by the Joint Declaration adopted at the first conference of the Process in Prague, held in 2008, the projects will pertain to the prevention and combating of illegal migration and organising the return of immigrants. That will include re-admission agreements regulating the expulsion procedures of individuals arriving from the territory of one party and illegally staying in the territory of another party. It will also include the re-integration of returning migrants, the promotion of legal migration and the harnessing of the developmental potential inherent in migration which benefits individual migrants as well as entire societies. The integration of immigrants in the host country and the issue of asylum and international protection are dealt with by the projects as well.
The Prague Process is a political initiative which emerged amid implementation of the Building Migration Partnerships (BMP) project, carried out from January 2009 to June 2011. The Project envisages a Global Approach to migration in an eastern and south-eastern direction, and that is why it has received a grant from the European Commission. The project’s leaders were the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Responsible for its technical and financial servicing is the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). Alluding to the venue of the First Ministerial BMP Conference and to avoid association solely with the BMP project, the name of the process was changed to Prague Process.
The purpose of the project was to gain knowledge about the migration situation in the states of the eastern neighbourhood and to subsequently draw up a catalogue of issues which could be dealt with in future Agreements on migration partnerships between EU Member States and eastern-neighbourhood states. Countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey have also been invited to cooperate within the framework of the Prague Process/BMP.
The BMP project has included theme workshops and migration missions in the CIS countries as well as the drafting of migration profiles of participating states and interactive maps of migration routes in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (i-Map).
Owing to the success of efforts carried out as part of the BMP project and considerable interest on the part of EU Members States and the European Commission in deepening cooperation with the CIS states and Central Asian states, the process participants have decided to expand the efforts launched during the project and enhance the cooperation achieved to date.
Artur Koziolek - Presidency Spokesperson at the Ministry of the Interior and Administration
Related events:
2nd Ministerial Conference of the Prague Process - Building Migration Partnerships in action