Ministerial Conference “Building Migration Partnerships” – on-line news
April 27th to 28th, 2009 – The ministerial conference “Building Migration Partnerships” is taking place in Prague. The main goal of the conference is to intensify joint cooperation based on the principle of partnership between involved countries in governing migration. Participants of this conference are besides EU officials the representatives from the Schengen space, South-eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Turkey.
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Czech Minister of the Interior Ivan Langer and the Director of the Department for Asylum and Migration Policy welcomed the foreign delegates.
Opening speech
The ministerial conference “Building Migration Partnerships” took place in Prague in April 27 to 28, 2009. It is the biggest conference organized by the Ministry of Interior under the Czech Presidency. The Minister of the Interior of the CzechRepublic in his opening speech said: “I would like to answer the question why we are organizing this conference. In many countries there has been a series of significant changes in the entire migration situation in the last few years: we are facing the challenges of migration, especially in the fight against illegal migration, in the area of better and effective policing legal migration as well as integration. We have adopted essential political decisions representing clear political answers to these migration related problem both on national and regional level. Nevertheless this new situation is both challenge and an opportunity to intensify cooperation between all involved countries in broader European region. We introduced a bridge as a symbol of this conference. This bridge stands on five pillars. Five pillars representing five common topics. I believe we can create a bridge that will connect us all, a bridge standing on five firm pillars. A bridge representing an equal partnership."
Vasyl Marmazov, Ukraine
The first block focused on prevention and fight against the illegal migration and on return policy was introduced by representatives of Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. They pointed out that migration is not an isolated problem but is closely connected with organized crime and other negative phenomenons. Success requires tight cooperation between the original countries, transit countries and target countries. An effective implementation of return policy is one of the foundation stones of today’s migration policy. The participants highlighted the importance of the joint declaration that will be accepted during this conference. “Our declaration is a modern effective plan on the way to improve managing migration,” stated Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni. “We should come up with an international standard concerning this area. The cooperation between migrant’s original country and their new country is also vital,” stated Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Internal Affairs Marmazov.