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Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

CHAPTER 4.
Integration and migration policy

4.1. The European Union framework

4.1.1. Guidance in the establishment of the integration framework
Migration and integration policies are strong EU agenda issues due to labour
demands for economic growth in the face of current demographic tendencies,
forecasts of technologically-biased growth, and political and public pressure to
rationalise and to ensure a successful, stable integration of third-country
immigrants.
Since the late 1990s the EU has worked steadily to build an integration
framework for migrants; this aims to ensure that national states share common
principles to bind immigrants to the rules and obligations of countries, while also
allowing compromise with creating economic, social and cultural conditions for
integration. States are prompted to guarantee migrants the acquisition of
language skills, knowledge of the culture, and successful pathways to learning
and employment.
A number of policy documents have contributed to the EU integration
framework, defining shared compromises for national States regarding principles,
rights, obligations and support policies for migrant integration. Some examples
are the presidency conclusions of the Tampere European Council in 1999
(Council of the European Union, 1999), the 2000 directives of the EU Council of
Ministers, on equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic
origin year (Council of the European Union, 2000a) (2000/43/EC) and equal
treatment in employment and occupation (2000/78/EC) (Council of the European
Union, 2000b).
As early as 2003, the European Commission communication on immigration,
integration and employment (European Commission, 2003), acknowledged
progress within the EU and prompted states to further their integration efforts to
respond to skills needs associated with economic growth. In the following year
the European Council Hague programme for strengthening freedom security and
justice in the EU (Council of the European Union, 2005) established the common
basic principles (CBP) underlying the European framework on integration for
third-country migrants (see Box 1).

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