The Finnish Immigration Service has been designated as the Finnish national contact point for the European Migration Network (EMN). The network has national contact points in all EU countries and its objective is to provide up-to-date, objective, reliable and comparable information on migration and asylum in the EU. In addition to politicians and government officials, information is also provided to the general public on the network website.
EMN’s main products are annual reports on the development of immigration policy, annual reports on asylum and migration statistics, and various thematic reviews. In addition to these, the contact points may ask each other questions. The answers are summarised into an information package.
The annual reports, reviews and studies are publicly available in English on the international EMN website at http://emn.sarenet.es. Reports, reviews and studies may also be issued in a printed form. The reports by the Finnish contact point will be published also in Finnish.
To complement the pan-European network, each country will create their own national network, whose members consist of immigration-related government bodies, research institutions and civic organisations. A national network may participate in studies, reports and queries. At the same time the members obtain information on immigration research in other EU countries, as well as visibility to their own research activities.
The EMN began as a pilot project in 2003. In May 2008, the European Council decided to make EMN a permanent organization. Initially, the Finnish national contact point operated at Statistics Finland, but as the scope of the operations expanded from statistics to other research, the contact point was transferred to Finnish Immigration Service in 2008. The Network is chaired by the EU Commission.
Further information for the media: Head of Section for EMN, Kielo Brewis, tel. +358 71 873 0431, e-mail: kielo.brewis@migri.fi
3.12.2008
