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Objectives and Governance

The Urban Agenda Partnership on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees

In 2016, under the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU, the ‘Urban Agenda for the EU’ was launched to empower European cities to have a stronger influence in shaping EU legislation, securing funding, and facilitating knowledge exchange. 

As one of the Thematic Partnerships, the Urban Agenda Partnership on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees (hereafter the Inclusion Partnership), launched in 2016 and coordinated by the City of Amsterdam and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME) addresses the challenges of integration and to better align policy development, knowledge exchange and implementation of policies in this field.

The Inclusion Partnership has developed into an effective, outcome-oriented platform for eye-level cooperation and trust-building between cities, Member States, EU institutions, stakeholders such as civil society actors, international associations, think tanks, as well as migrants and refugees themselves.

Partnership Members play a pivotal role: they identify bottlenecks related to integration, conceptualise actions to address these challenges, and provide resources, knowledge and networks for these actions’ implementation. In addition, one of the key strengths of the Partnership is its ability to engage and involve external partners in pursuing its objectives; this way, the actions benefit from external expertise and capacity in a needs-oriented way, broadening the Partnership’s operational capacity and amplifying its impact.