For years, an urgently needed reform of the European migration and asylum system has been pending. However, the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) adopted by the EU institutions in April 2024 will hardly provide any improvement to the situation for asylum seekers. On the contrary, a further deterioration of the situation for those seeking protection must be assumed. Due to the growing complexity of the issue, sustainable and agile solutions are needed. We see ourselves as an idea incubator for innovative approaches in EU migration policy and offer a platform for collaborative processes and projects.
Europe urgently needs a medium- and long-term strategy that treats the arrival of protection seekers and migrants not as a crisis but also as an opportunity and prioritizes the protection of fundamental rights. People are still dying as they flee to Europe or are forced to endure degrading conditions at Europe's external borders. Current compromise solutions between nation states, such as those on which the current reform of the Common European Asylum System is based, are characterised by deterrence and isolation and do not offer a sustainable and human rights-based solution. Instead, they lead to an erosion of international legal standards and the rights of migrants and refugees in the EU.
We do not see immigration and flight as a threat, but as a humanitarian task as well as a political opportunity and want to give new impetus to European migration and asylum policy. By tackling challenges pragmatically, responsibly and in a spirit of solidarity, we are developing new ambitious concepts and projects for safe migration and escape routes into the European Union that benefit both protection seekers and migrants as well as local actors. For this purpose, we also use data-based, innovative tools such as algorithms. Our proposed solutions are oriented towards the medium and long term and aim to bring about a change in thinking.
We see ourselves as a platform that brings together various stakeholders on the topic of municipal reception and integration in order to translate theory into practice across Europe. To this end, we support the networking of European municipalities in order to strengthen their visibility for EU decision-makers and their political voice. In addition, we actively support the development of strategic partnerships between municipal networks and transnational civil society initiatives, in particular the International Alliance of Safe Harbours (IASH) and the network "From The Sea To The City" (FSTC)with our expertise and pioneering ideas.
In recent years, more and more European cities and municipalities have declared their willingness to proactively take in people seeking protection. These progressive municipalities stand for a Europe of solidarity that respects human rights and takes responsibility for the protection of human lives. These municipalities can make an important contribution to overcoming migration policy challenges. As a platform, we therefore pursue a participatory municipal approach to asylum and migration policy.
For this we propose a Governance-concept that is based on a direct relocation of refugees from Europe's external borders to welcoming European communities. A algorithm-based matching-process can play a central role in order to match the needs of the protection seekers and the offers of the municipalities willing to take them in, and to bring them into the best possible agreement. This concept for a pragmatic and participatory EU-relocation is being implemented concretely in the Re:Match pilot project and tested for possible scalability. We are convinced that hands-on pilot projects can successfully strengthen constructive policy proposals due to their learning by doing- dynamics and can thus contribute to multifaceted and sustainable improvements in migration governance.
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