During a visit of the minister, ICMPD's new Director General presented his goal to strengthen positioning of the organisation as a platform for dialogue and mediation on migration.
The meeting gave Austria’s Minister of Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, Mr Sebastian Kurz, and the new Director General of ICMPD, Mr Michael Spindelegger, an opportunity to discuss the roles of international organisations such as ICMPD could play in the current migration debate. In the meeting on 25 January, both acknowledged the high importance of further collaboration between the Ministry and ICMPD, and declared to further strengthen these ties by continuing the project based cooperation on integration and other topics.
Austria is a founding member of the organisation. ICMPD and the Ministry have a long history of previous cooperation on multiple studies and projects on topics ranging from asylum, to legal migration and integration as well as migration & development.
Two of the recent collaborations between the Ministry and ICMPD are the "Link Up! Feasibility Study- Enabling Diaspora Entrepreneurship" and the pilot study "Integration Processes of Newly Arrived Immigrants (LEGINT)." The Link Up! Feasibility Study explored the concept of creating a new financial and capacity-building instrument or programme to support diaspora entrepreneurs in Austria. The ministry has also recently funded the pilot study "Integration Processes of Newly Arrived Immigrants", which assists the study of the integration processes of immigrants in Austria.
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Photo: David Blacher