European Union

Stefano Manservisi, Director-General in the European Commission Home Affairs Department, spoke at today's International Dialogue on Migration Special Session on migration crises as one of the five panellists. The panel figured high-level government representatives from Costa Rica, the US, Zimbabwe and the Philippines brought together by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and moderated by IOM Deputy Director General Laura Thompson.

Mr Manservisi distinguished between addressing on the one hand the short-term aspects of migration crises such as last year in Libya, where the EU assisted the voluntary repatriation of more than 30.000 foreign-country nationals, and on the other hand the need to developing a more long-term approach to anticipate and better confront migration crises. He saw this very much as a global requirement. The Director-General presented the EU policy linking the management of the humanitarian short-term situation with the mid to long-term development strategy and working also on strengthening synergies between migration, development and mobility. This is also the philosophy behind the revised and enhanced "Global Approach to Migration and Mobility" (GAMM), which the EU Ministers are going to discuss at their meeting on 26/27 April. The GAMM is conceived as the overarching framework for the EU external migration policy, consisting of the four pillars legal migration, irregular migration, migration and development, and international protection.

The European Union is a major partner of IOM and UNHCR. Work is under way to strengthen the relationship between the services of the European Institutions and IOM with a view to regularly exchanging information and analyses. The European Commission has granted € 730 million in the Horn of Africa in 2011 only and is currently managing the growing migration effects of the crisis in Syria. It also advocates regional protection schemes as one of the means to tackle migration crises and where it has developed experience notably in 2005 in the Great Lakes region, in Northern Africa last year and now in the Horn of Africa.