Giving Compass' Take:

• The Migration Policy Institute lays out key ways the EU could improve its funding strategies to better address ongoing migration and integration challenges. 

• How can funders work alongside local, national, and international efforts to support immigrants and refugees? What does integration look like in your community? 

• Learn more about the challenges of integrating refugees into Europe. 

The heightened volume and pace of irregular migrant arrivals in Europe during the 2015–16 migration crisis exposed the limits of EU funding mechanisms when faced with a need to respond quickly to shifting migration pressures. The Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund came under particular strain—requiring an injection of 700 million euros more than originally budgeted for emergency assistance actions between 2014 and 2017. As a result, the European Commission has been forced to re-examine the EU funding landscape and how unusual suspects—such as the 121-billion-euro European Social Fund (ESF)—could be adjusted to better support migration and integration policy aims as they rise to the top of EU and national agendas.

With policymakers in the midst of negotiations for the next EU funding cycle—the multiannual financial framework for 2021–27—the European Union looks set to strengthen this focus on migration and integration objectives, especially under the proposed successor to the ESF, termed the ESF+. In order to avoid the pitfalls of the current funding cycle, it is essential for EU policymakers and the financial experts advising them to step back and assess where EU funds will bene t from small tweaks, and where more radical changes may be required. Among key areas for consideration are:

  • Getting the right stakeholders around the table and giving them a voice. The 2014–20 funding cycle saw the introduction of the ‘Partnership Principle’ for funds under shared management between Member States and the European Commission. Under this principle, Member States are supposed to engage with a diverse range of stakeholders, including marginalized groups, when designing and implementing programming using EU funds. Yet Member States retain significant discretion over the process, raising questions about the extent to which smaller organizations and those representing key target populations for funded initiatives, including immigrants, have been included.
  • Removing barriers to participation for smaller and community-led organizations. Civil-society organizations are important beneficiaries of EU funds, particularly for immigrant integration projects. But the eligibility requirements that govern who can propose and receive funding for a project can (implicitly) exclude many such groups, including those with little experience with EU funds, volunteer-run organizations with limited administrative capacity, and small organizations that fall below the required income threshold.
  • Boosting coherence and complementarity between funds and with other EU policy tools. EU funds pale in comparison to the size of national budgets, but they are a key lever for the European Union to promote its priorities within Member States. Having multiple EU funds target a few common priorities (rather than diluting their impact over a wide range of objectives) can allow these funds to achieve more than the sum of their parts, while avoiding wasteful duplication.
  • Strengthening the evidence base for implementation and reform of EU funds. A major challenge of the seven-year cycle of multiannual nancial frame- works is that planning for the next framework be- gins long before evaluations of the current one are completed, limiting the evidence base for reforms. In the absence of up-to-date data, negotiations gen- erally rely on evaluations from the previous frame- work. But there is a sizeable and underutilised body of information on what works when it comes to EU funds, in particular, and different types of nancial instruments, more broadly.