In a new report on Tuesday 3 December, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) found that the ‘Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund’ (AMIF) “has played a useful role in the integration of third-country nationals in the EU, but that its impact has not yet been demonstrated“, according to a press release.
The fund’s contribution to migrant integration has been difficult to assess, not least because Member States haven’t monitored the integration process.
The resources allocated through this fund to integration measures under EU Member States’ national programmes amounted to almost €1 billion in 2014-2020 and increased to around €1.9 billion in 2021-2027.
Contributing to the report were audit visits to Germany, Spain, France and Sweden, selected on the basis of the amounts allocated to all Member States for integration; 20 projects under shared management and two under direct management were studied.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the number of non-EU nationals (or ‘third-country nationals’) legally resident in an EU country reached 27.3 million in 2023, or 6.1% of the population. Around 73% lived in just four Member States: Germany (28%), Spain (16%), France (15%) and Italy (14%).
The Court found “that the legislative framework provided a clear rationale for Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund intervention”, but that in some Member States the level of AMIF support for integration measures was low compared to that from other available funding sources and the fund’s added value risked being limited by its administrative complexity.
“We found that there was limited coordination between Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and the European Social Fund in 2014-2020” to fund full integration pathways, the Court also writes.
Nor were the data supplied always reliable. In Spain, for example, the number of participants reflected in the basic data for all projects was twice as high as that actually reported to the European Commission.
The audit also found that, in general, Member States have not adjusted the (generally declining) number of migrants targeted by their national integration programmes in line with the increase in AMIF funds allocated for this purpose.
In addition, the degree to which integration measures were adapted to specific groups of migrants varied from one Member State to another.
The Court recommends that the European Commission, in cooperation with the Member States, “identify the financing gaps and streamline the programming of [AMIF] support; (...) collect, analyse and disseminate best practice on [AMIF] (...); improve the reliability of data and monitoring and reporting on [AMIF] support for integration”.
The Commission is also invited to complete the reporting framework before the end of 2026 in order to better assess the fund’s impact on integration pathways.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/em8 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)