EMN National Contact Point (NCP) in Hungary organised the international conference entitled Contribution of Academia to the Shaping of Migration Policies which was held in Budapest on October 14, 2014. It was attended by the Slovak EMN NCP representative.
The aim of the conference was to highlight added value of cooperation between academia and state institutions in the area of migration and asylum. In addition to this, representatives of academia tried to point out areas which still need further improvements as for the measures of the state administration and European institutions - particularly, the area of asylum, free movement of persons and measures to combat xenophobia.
In the first panel, the speakers discussed various ways of cooperation between academia and state institutions at the national level in Hungary as well as at the international level. Gyula Kovacs introduced activities of the Hungarian Regional Science Association in the area of migration. As an example of effective exchange of information and cooperation with other countries, he mentioned a conference organised by the Hungarian Ministry of Interior for Serbian representatives of public administration due to problems at the Serbian-Hungarian border. The exchange of information was further elaborated by Zoltan Hautzinger who presented migration studies at the National University of Public Service in Budapest which prepares experts in the field. Apart from the topic of integration of foreigners, the university attempts to include also the topic of e.g. statelessness into its agenda. Attile Melegh from the Corvinus University in Budapest linked to educational issues with his presentation about ways how to get out from national boxes in which he offered a view on teaching migration studies. Due to the fact that cooperation is necessary not just at the national level but also at the international one, Madeleine Vasquez Ortiz from ICF International presented the main EMN outputs and their potential use for policy shaping. EMN was further discussed by the Hungarian EMN NCP representative, Katalin Berenyi, who based on description of various activities analysed how EMN NCP in Hungary influences formation of migration policies at the national level. At the end of the panel, speakers expressed their views on which topics should be elaborated by EMN in the future.
The second panel dealt with research in the field of asylum and policy-making. The first speaker, Julia Mink, lawyer working in the field of human rights at the University of Eötvös Loránd, focused on the assessment of Common European Asylum System (CEAS) while emphasising the need of the assessment of CEAS from the human rights perspective. Nenad Matejic from IOM Budapest came back to the examples of the abovementioned cooperation and presented the outcomes of an international project on unaccompanied minors.
Discussion of the third panel focused on fight against xenophobia. Endre Sik, professor from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, presented main findings of the research aimed at public opinion in Hungary on the provision of international protection. Tycho Walaardt from the Ministry of Security and Justice continued with the topic and talked about the link between xenophobia and economic crisis.
The last panel discussed the free movement of persons. Vera Ács from the University in Szeged focused on this topic with regard to new-borns. She pointed out the case of birth of a child to a Hungarian citizen abroad. In the last presentation, Meghan Benton from Migration Policy Institute analysed current challenges of the free movement of persons.
On October 15, a cluster meeting took place at which EMN NCP representatives discussed promotion of the EMN activities.
More information about the conference including programme and presentations is available on Hungarian EMN NCP website.