On Monday 27 March, representatives of Afghanistan and the EU and its member states expressed their desire to work more closely together on questions of migration.
"The need to work together towards an effective cooperation on the basis of solidarity and information sharing was reaffirmed by both sides", the European External Action Service stated after the second meeting of the joint working group established to facilitate the implementation of the joint way forward on migration issues.
On the fight against smuggling and trafficking in human beings, the EU gave a briefing about the ongoing evaluation of the call for proposals to "strengthen law enforcement cooperation to better address migrant smuggling through the joint work of law enforcement authorities in EU member states on the one hand and law enforcement authorities in Afghanistan on the other". Europe and the Afghans reaffirmed their common aim of ensuring the return of Afghan migrants in the EU illegally and ensuring "a safe, manageable, predictable and dignified return process of the Afghan irregular migrants in the European Union". They discussed reintegration assistance, with a focus on the situation of returnees and programmes for reintegration in communities.
In 2016, the European Commission developed an operation to improve the reintegration of people sent back to Afghanistan, mobilising €78 million for Afghanistan for the 2016-2020 period.
The parties agreed on the need to work together on awareness-raising campaigns, to reframe the discourse, to counter the narrative of people smugglers and traffickers and to direct prospective migrants to official sources of information (websites, providing accurate and updated information on EU asylum, migration and return policy) as well as development cooperation projects in Afghanistan.
The next meeting of the joint working group is to take place in Kabul in the second half of 2017. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)