Integration as a two-way process in the EU? Assessing the Relationship between the European Integration Fund and the Common Basic Principles on Integration

This report examines the nature, the limits and potential of the principle of integration as a two-way process of mutual accommodation between migrants and the receiving societies. It assesses the extent to which this key principle, which lays at the foundation of the EU framework on integration, is implemented in practice by investigating how it informs national programmes supported by the European integration fund. The report stems from research undertaken by CEPS for the project ‘Integration as a two-way process in the EU? Assessing the European Integration Fund and the Common Basic Principles on Integration’.

The research aims at identifying ways to enhance the use and oversight of European funding for the development of integration policies and activities at the national, regional and local levels. The authors put forward recommendations for evidence-based policy-making within the EU framework on integration and for improving the use of European funding for integration measures at national level. The recommendations include concrete steps to ensure that European funding primarily serves to put into practice a European approach to integration that is understood as a two-way process in which not only migrants but also the receiving societies – including civil society, social partners and multi-level public authorities – participate and interact.

This report is divided into six sections. Section 2 outlines the scope and methodology of our study. It first offers a synthesised summary of the main substantive and financial components of the EU framework on integration. The section underlines the need to consider the close connectivity between the CBPs and the EIF in determining the impact of the EU framework on integration before presenting the specifics of our assessment. Section 3 provides some observations regarding the national implementation of the EIF, along with some of the most notable difficulties that have been identified as amounting to barriers to accessing the EIF. It is based on the outcomes of the desk research and consultation with the integration actors, which took place through a qualitative survey. Section 4 assesses the ways in which the EIF has been used to support the integration strategies developed within the member states. Important trends in the activities funded are highlighted and the pitfalls of such usage are presented. Section 5 is devoted to the two-way process tenet and to its possible practical translations. After an overview of the emergence of this principle in EU policy, the relevance of the EIF in supporting activities sustaining the principle is examined prior to an analysis of what, according to prominent stakeholders, constitutes a two-way process of mutual accommodation. Section 6 concludes and puts forward a set of policy recommendations to facilitate the promotion and application of the understanding of integration as a two-way process in the EU through the EIF.