Eurocities is proud to present our very first digital Integrating Cities toolkit! Developed throughout our project VALUES, this toolkit guides cities in implementing

Migrants shouldn’t feel like the beneficiaries of handouts, but should be empowered to participate fully in society. This is according to Marcus König, mayor of Nuremberg,

The global number of displaced persons keeps rising. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has identified more than 1.44 million refugees in need of resettlement in 2020.

Want to travel, all expenses paid, to other European cities to work on best practices on migration and integration? Our EU co-funded project, CONNECTION, is now offering places to eight cities to join in study visits and share their integration best practices and...

Integration cannot happen without real contact of locals and migrants. It's time to open the space of possibility with CONNECTION. What concrete policies can streamline migrant integration, empowering and engaging newcomers in Europe’s cities? CONNECTION will...

“We saw what it was here in Nuremberg when we forgot our values,” said Diana Liberova,

“This is a welcoming community with a great sense of hospitality,” said councillor Carmelina Labruzzo, welcoming the cities of Madrid and Riga to Cesena, where they had gathered to make progress on migrant integration.

Half of all Amsterdam residents are first – or second-generation migrants.

“He came, he was so isolated. He had anxiety; he was so stressed. He was an asylum seeker…”

With their yellow and violet vests and reflective orange jackets, the Voluntarios de Madrid (Volunteers of Madrid) cut a distinctive figure in the streets.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ integration solution, but Oslo tends towards ‘extra-large.’

They say that there is no such thing as a free lunch, so when asylum seekers eat lunch for free at Bristol’s Refugee Rights Welcome Centre, who is really footing the bill?

How can migrant volunteers help you roller-skate through Zurich by night, see fireworks over the lake or enjoy some stargazing with your children at the local observatory?

What are the needs of the quintessential migrant, and what is the one best way to cater to them? In Cesena, the municipality has made it clear that there is only one way to answer this question: to dismiss it.

EUROCITIES is looking for candidate cities to host the 9th edition of the Integrating Cities Conference, expected to take place in the autumn 2020.

The mainstream media likes to ignore the fact, but anyone who has eyes can see that Europe’s public spaces are battling an unrelenting force of infestation and degradation. To put it candidly, weeds are springing up. In Italy, the city of Turin is trying out new models in the field of migration to deal with the issue.

Images of refugees entering Greece have been blazing across Europe for almost half a decade – now it’s time to hear their voices. Thessaloniki’s radio station ‘FM100’ is about to bring those voices to the airwaves with a weekly show staffed by refugee volunteers from...

Migration is a fact in all of our cities, but how we react determines the rest. At the eighth Integrating Cities Conference (ICC VIII), 180 delegates met in Milan to unlock the social and economic potential that migration holds.

When the question of integration arose in Dresden, in 2014, it was consultation with citizens that shaped the policy. A six-week consultation process, which included public forums and discussions, resulted in the concept eventually adopted in May 2015.

To mark World Refugee Day (June 20), mayors from more than 50 cities around the world are calling on all local authorities and municipalities to join them in welcoming and including refugees in their communities.

At lunch under the sweltering Lisbon sun, representatives from Birmingham, Brighton and Utrecht stickied their fingers with honied Qatayef, served up by Tayybeh, a catering service run by two Syrian refugees.

This year, newspapers are littered with ominous headlines such as ‘Latvia, a disappearing nation’ (from Politico) highlighting the massive emigration that has seen the nation lose almost 20% of its population in under two decades.

The Greeks have a deep-rooted tradition of ‘Philoxenia’, taking pride in showing hospitality to strangers. Indeed, one of the great challenges for Athens in dealing with the current influx of migrants is coordinating the plethora of Greek groups and organisations that have sprung up to welcome the new population.

Two core principals have boosted the success of migrant integration in Utrecht: beginning before the beginning and inclusion for all. But what does it mean to begin before the beginning?

For every city, migrant integration comes with its challenges, but any city that might consider these hurdles insurmountable should look to the walled Cypriot capital of Nicosia.

For more than half a century, the battered church of St. John, where congregations of pigeons had replaced the pious, stood as a symbol of the ravages Gdansk suffered during the second world war. Now, thanks to Larry ‘Okey’ Ugwu, there is music – from Chopin to brass bands – flooding through its halls again.

In a time when immigration is on the rise in cities, good ideas need to start migrating too. That’s why representatives from Rotterdam took a trip to Tampere last week, to help the city draft a new action plan for smoothing the transition for immigrants into the local labour force.

Without the inclusion of citizens in the political processes, there can be no democracy. The city of Turin is tackling this issue head on, ensuring that even the most vulnerable social groups can be heard.

Although migrant run companies are enriching Lisbon in the areas of food, technology and retail, the city is anxious to see similar successes in other industries. Birmingham, a city which has demonstrated powerful policies for migrant labour integration, hosted Lisbon for a two-day study visit to inspire more ambitious policy as part of Cities Grow.

The University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), together with nine Eurocities member cities, is currently preparing guidance for municipal authorities in Europe on ways to respond to irregular migrants and the social challenges they bring at the local level.

As cities strive to at once promote integration and create benefit for themselves, they may be surprised to learn that they have had a powerful tool at their disposal all along: public procurement.

When Reza Sardari, entrepreneur, arrived in Rotterdam from Iran, he was determined that his migrant background would not be a setback but a market advantage.

Migrants arriving in a new city often have the same question: How can I work? The desire to rapidly create a symbiotic dynamic between new arrivals and their new environment is one that cities naturally share.

Emblazoned into popular culture by Heidi, Switzerland’s most famous orphan, no garment is more quintessential of Bavaria and its near neighbours than the Dirndl.

Diversity is a watchword of European policy, but while the word sounds wonderful, and looks great in the titles of posters and pamphlets, it can be tough to make it a reality. The city of Ghent is well ahead of the game in creating a cutting edge, far reaching diversity policy.

How can a city unlock the potential of its migrants, boosting their economic participation as employees and entrepreneurs? A city’s migrants can increase the size and quality of the labour force, become business leaders and enhance its spending power.

From 9-12 July, Thessaloniki hosted a delegation from Amsterdam and Zurich, as part of a mentoring visit organised by EUROCITIES and Migration Work.

A mentoring visit of Leeds and Stockholm to Milan took place from 26 to 29 June in the framework of the Solidarity Cities Initiative.

November 2015 - Europe has witnessed an inflow of a large number of people over the last years. As a consequence of the geopolitical instability in the Middle East and Africa, migration and refugee flows towards Europe have increased with significant territorial...

EUROCITES and its Integrating Cities intiative will be organising or will be represented at several events in the coming months…

As the result of a dialogue initiated between EUROCITIES and the city of Toronto early 2013, the Integrating Cities Charter was adopted by City Council as one facet of the Toronto Newcomer Strategy.

On 13 May, we published our political statement on asylum. Our statement was developed by our working group migration and integration with input from all social affairs forum working groups.

Nine politicians from the cities of Barcelona, Belfast, Besiktas, Eindhoven, Leipzig, Lisbon, Nantes and Osmangazi gathered in the Turkish city on 11 March 2015 in a closed political session to discuss the future EUROCITIES political statement on asylum and migration...

The Advisory Board for Ethnic Relations (Secretariat at the Ministry of the Interior of Finland) has just this morning, at the annual so called Cities and Communities Market, given recognition and an award to the City of Tampere for their 0-tolerance and activism against racism and measures that enhance participation and education of migrant youth.

In a decision taken on 10 June in city council, the City of Toronto adopted the EUROCITIES Integrating Cities Charter. The largest city in Canada becomes the first non-European signatory of our charter.

The final conference of our ImpleMentoring project on city-to-city support for migrant integration was an opportunity to present the project’s findings and to assess the methodology, used for the first time in a transnational project led by EUROCITIES.

Mentoring and ImpleMenting cities have been working together since the visits on roadmaps for change in the ImpleMenting cities.

In the framework of the EUROCITIES Ghent 2013 annual conference, the city of Leipzig, represented by Mayor Burkhard Jung and Vice-Mayor for Social Affairs Thomas Fabian, became the 32nd signatory of the Integrating Cities Charter.

Invited as a EU umbrella organisation, EUROCITIES was represented at the 10th meeting of the EUROPEAN INTEGRATION FORUM organised by the European Economic and Social Commitee on 26 & 27 Novembe 2013 in Brussels, and gathering National Contact Points on Integration, Civil Society Organisations, Migrant Communities Organisations and Local Authorities.

The city of Lisbon became the 31st signatory of the EUROCITIES Integrating Cities charter on Monday 25th November, when Mayor Antonio Costa signed the document after a meeting in Brussels of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External affairs (CIVEX), of which he is chairman since September 2012.

At our Integrating Cities conference in Tampere, we took the opportunity to talk to Stefano Manservisi, director general for home affairs at the European Commission


We took advantage of meeting with the vice mayor, responsible for migration, in Tampere, Olli-Poika Parviainen and host of the recent Integrating Cities conference to ask him about migration in the city.


Is the EUROCITIES Charter on Integrating Cities coming to Toronto? We asked two proponents to explain the need for a charter in a city celebrated for its diversity. Chris Brillinger is the City of Toronto’s Executive Director of Social Development, Finance and Administration, and Jehad Aliweiwi is the Executive Director of the Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office, a multi service non-profit organization.

The SHARE project will be drawing to a close at the end of November 2013. It has been providing opportunities for structured dialogue, exchange of practice and networking between cities and regional actors, and between experienced and emerging resettlement countries planning or considering resettlement.

EUROCITIES and its Migration & Integration Working group contributed PICUM’s new report Guaranteeing Access to Health Care for Undocumented Migrants in Europe: What Role Can Local and Regional Authorities Play?

The VI^th Integrating Cites Conference took place in Tampere on 9 & 10 September 2013 and gathered more than 160 delegates from 40 cities as well as representatives of Civil Society Organisations and international bodies such as the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Committee of Regions and the United Nations.

Cities are addressing migrant integration challenges through a series of ImpleMentoring peer visits. Cities are addressing migrant integration challenges over a series of peer visits organised under our ImpleMentoring project.

ImpleMentoring project partners meet in Brussels on 26-27 February 2013. On 26 and 27 February, ImpleMentoring “city to city support for migrant integration” project partners gathered in EUROCITIES office in Brussels for an intense two days launch meeting.

Launch of the new EUROCITIES Integrating Cities project, ImpleMentoring on 15 November. ImpleMentoring – City to City support for migrant integration started on 15 november 2012 and will last for 18 months until May 2014.