On 4 May 2017, the German EMN National Contact Point in Germany in cooperation with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and the Representation of the European Commission in Germany has organised a conference entitled “Return Counselling – Integrated Return Management – Reintegration”. The conference was attended by more than 130 participants from several European countries, EU institutions, the Federation, the Länder and municipalities as well as several research institutes, international organisations and NGOs.
Challenges of migration policy, the relationship between the EU and third countries on the topic of return, as well as on the funding of return programmes in the countries of origin were the topics of the welcoming speeches of Elisabeth Kotthaus, Deputy Head of the Political Section at the Representation of the European Commission in Germany, and Dr. Uta Dauke, Vice President of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Subsequently, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior Dr. Emily Haber underlined the importance of return policy as a key instrument of migration governance in her opening speech and spoke about the complexity of the return policy in Germany as such.
Subsequently, Dr. Katie Kuschminder, Research Fellow of the Global Governance Programme at the European University Institute in Florence explained the connection between sustainable return and reintegration. She stated that the policy debate on sustainable return was too frequently restricted to preventing remigration, thus denying opportunities for the multi-faceted return and reintegration process.
In the first panel focused on return counselling, a representative of Saarland Horst Finé, Friedrich Einwichand from a church-based social services organisation Diakonie Rheinland-Pfalz and Knut Holm from the Directorate for Immigration in Norway introduced return counselling projects and their special methods. They discussed the advantages of early counselling, of local counselling structures as opposed to the central ones, of close cooperation with NGOs and of the additional funding by the Länder. Individual counselling for asylum seekers, as well as providing them with information regarding their status and the situation in the country of origin when deciding on whether or not to return and opting for assisted return was mentioned to be of a particular importance.
In the second panel entitled ‘Integrated return management‘, Dan Rotenberg from European Commission, Dr. Patrick Schmidtke from the Return Division of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees - and Roger Steiner from the State Secretariat for Migration of Switzerland took a critical look at the status quo in integrated return management and discussed what adjustments need to be made in the return process in order to ensure a smoother procedure. Dr. Schmidtke, described Germany’s latest return programme StarthilfePlus - Initial Aid Plus, and presented two new information services: a nationwide return hotline and the "Returning from Germany" web portal (www.ReturningfromGermany.de). Both services intend to facilitate the access to information and give an overview of the parallel return programmes that are operated by local authorities, Länder and the Federation. Dan Rotenberg spoke about the renewed EU Action Plan on Return and recommendations to make return procedures more effective. Roger Steiner emphasised in turn that voluntary return and the consistent enforcement of deportations belonged together, given that the latter was also an incentive to opt for assisted voluntary return.
The third panel about the reintegration programmes discussed examples of tried-and tested practices, new approaches and proposals as to how reintegration can succeed and reintegration programmes can be designed. Experts in the panel included Po-Ling Ho from the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice, Dr. Sarah Tietze from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Peter Bonin from the development cooperation organisation Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). In her presentation, Dr. Tietze described on the example of Vietnamese migrants how reintegration and sustainable return to the country of origin can succeed. Po-Ling Ho provided an insight into the work of the European Reintegration Network (ERIN). ERIN is chaired by the Netherlands, and involves 17 EU Member States and Australia, as well as 20 third countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Somalia, as well as local NGOs, the IOM and Caritas. Peter Bonin closed the panel with a lecture on development-orientated and development-sensitive reintegration.
To sum up, return counselling, good monitoring, a holistic view of individual and structural factors, including in the countries of origin, and close cooperation between all stakeholders within Germany and Europe, as well as with returnees’ countries of origin has proved to be of a crucial importance in order to ensure the return in dignity and facilitate reintegration in the countries of origin.
The article was prepared based on the Conference Report and other materials available at the website of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Germany.