Towards forward-looking migration governance: addressing the challenges, assessing capacities and designing future strategies

In the context of evolving EU migration governance and EU global migration-related perspectives and responsibilities, proposals should assess governance models, including recently established partnership instruments, as well as the revision of overarching agreements, their limitations and scale-up potential, including the effects of the external dimension of EU migration policies on countries of origin and transit, and the development for governance indicators as well as a framework migration governance's measurement. The focus should be on moving from emergency and crisis management to long-term evidence-based policy responses that can address the challenges of economic development and large scale population movements. The role of international aid, development agencies, and regional policies, e.g. neighbourhood or ACP-oriented policies, should be assessed. Regulatory issues pertaining to legal migration channels and legal pathways for people in need for protection, irregular migration trajectories, trafficking in human beings and smuggling, voluntary and forced return policies, the durability and sustainability of return to countries of origin, the role of diasporas and of economic, social and political remittances may be covered among others, with a specific focus on gender-related aspects. The development of indicators on migration governance is encouraged. They should assess how local, national, regional and global norms affect the way migration policies diffuse cross-thematically among scales and across time. The analysis of the role and potential of successful bottom-up citizens' initiatives for local migration governance is also encouraged. Inclusion of partners from EU and non-EU transit and destination countries is encouraged, also in consideration of the role played by the EU and its specialised agencies.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the order of EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Global migration governance regimes are emerging. There is a pressing need to identify priority areas and strategies to facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility as foreseen in the Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030 and the New York Declaration of 2016. The EU is involved in the global effort to design multilevel migration governance models applicable to the Union and to its Member States.

The action will inform policies, programming and actions contributing to EU and global migration governance based on human rights and through multilateral development partnerships, in cooperation with unions, employers, migrant and youth associations, cities and municipalities, among others. It will contribute to developing migration governance structures, policies and instruments within Europe, in the wider neighbourhood and in the global context, including development, investment and trade policies; as well as measuring the SDGs devoted to migration governance. It will also critically accompany and appraise the reform process of the EU’s asylum regimes as well as the external dimension of EU migration policies.