EU Backs Ethnic Statistics To See Migrant Integration

Brussels, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2020 ) :The European Commission wants an upcoming survey to give a breakdown of ethnicities in order to evaluate how well migrants are integrating, under a new plan presented Tuesday.

"To monitor the effectiveness of policies in the long-term, accurate and comparable data on the scale and nature of discrimination suffered by migrants is important," the Commission's Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion says.

"This also requires disaggregating data by ethnic or racial origin," it says.

The survey is to be carried out by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2022, focusing on immigrants and descendants in the 27-nation bloc.

It will aim to make up for a relative lack of data on how migrants might be discriminated against on the basis of ethnic origin, compared to their gender, any handicaps or age.

But it butts up against different approaches by EU countries.

France, for instance, makes it illegal for surveys to ask citizens and residents their ethnic origin, though it does allow questions about country of birth and nationality.

The EU plan of action is essentially a wish-list by the Commission on how to better integrate migrants into Europe, backed by deep-pocketed funding.

However most areas involved in integration -- education, health, employment, housing -- are the responsibility of national governments, not the European Commission.

But the survey could feed into a new migration and asylum pact that the Commission presented in September and which does come under the EU executive's remit.

That proposed pact seeks to overcome chronic disagreement between member states on how to absorb immigration, particularly asylum-seekers arriving through illegal entry routes into the bloc.

After a 2015 migration crisis that saw Greece and Italy bear the brunt of asylum-seekers, the Commission is proposing a burden-sharing mechanism under which such migrants are distributed among member states.

Countries that refuse to take many in would make up for it with financial contributions to those that do.

The plan would also see efforts to return people deemed to be economic migrants -- rather than refugees -- to their home countries.

"Everyone who has the right to be in Europe should have access to the tools they need to realise their full potential and assume the rights and obligations governing our Union," the Commission Vice President for Promoting our European Way of Life, Margaritis Schinas, said.

"Inclusive integration is giving the same tools and support needed to contribute to society, so that migrants can reach their full potential and our societies benefit from their strength and skills," added the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson.

Some 34 million people in the European Union, or around eight percent of its population, are born outside of the bloc. And 10 percent of younger people aged 15-34 born in the EU have at least one parent who was born outside it.