EUSBSR: European Forum on Integration of Migrants and Refugees in Hamburg

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Dear colleagues,

We hope this e-mail finds you well!

First, we would like to express our gratitude for your positive response to our invitation to present workshop proposals! We have received 21 workshop proposals, and we now from the many contacts we received that more are under preparation. All level of governance is represented, six member states and the EU Commission.

From the beginning, the main focus of the Integration Forum was on stakeholders within the EUSBSR, i.e. the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. During the preparatory work considerable interest has been expressed for the Forum from other parts of Europe.

In conjunction with a meeting of the Coordinators of Social Affair policies in the macro-regional strategies it was decided to start developing a joint flagship on integration of migrants, a platform for learning and co-creation of new policies and methods. This idea was supported by the ESF Committee at their meeting in Vienna in December, hosted by the European Commission.

With this new information there were made strong suggestions to extend the arrangement from covering only the EUSBSR to also involving the other three European macro-regional strategies, the EU strategies for the Danube Region, for the Adriatic and Ionian Region and for the Alpine Region. For this more time is needed to reach out to relevant stakeholders and allow them enough time to develop workshop proposals.

* We have therefore decided to postpone the European Forum on Integration of Migrants and Refugees in Hamburg. New date is 24 and 25 October 2019.

Our intention is that the Forum in Hamburg becomes the starting point, the kick-off for a new flagship, bringing together initiatives and projects that can contribute to the new flagship from the start. With this we hope to create the first flagship that joins all four macro regional strategies.

We apologize if this postponement causes any inconvenience and hope that you are still interested in participating in October 2019. By then we will hopefully be able to present a leader for our new flagship.

A new, official invitation and timeline for the invitation process will be sent to you at the latest in April 2019. If you decide on this point to keep up your workshop proposal – what we strongly support – give us a short notice. A draft of a new proposal will not be required, which will save you some extra work.

We look forward to hearing your replies and will keep you updated with a new invitation until end of April 2019.

Kind regards,

Sabine Hahn

Policy Area coordinator

sabine.hahn@hibb.hamburg.de<mailto:sabine.hahn@hibb.hamburg.de>

Anders Bergström

Policy area coordinator

anders.bergstrom@norden.se<mailto:anders.bergstrom@norden.se>