Rethinking Migration Distribution in the EU: Shall we start with the facts? CEPS Essay 23/22 January 2016

Sound policy-making about migration –how to distribute responsibility for asylum seekers, how to deal with the issue of secondary movement (when asylum seekers move from one state to another within the EU) and whether migrants are welcome or not – needs to be based on solid evidence. On 16 November 2015, EUROSTAT published comprehensive statistics on the issue of first-residence permits by member states. This CEPS Essay closely examines these data and reports some surprising findings, some of which vary considerably from the impression promoted by the European media.

Rethinking asylum distribution in the EU: Shall we start with the facts? CEPS Commentary, 17 June 2016

Ten months of what has alternatively been called a "refugee crisis", a "migrant crisis" and a "migrant and asylum crisis" in the EU has fuelled an exceptionally vivid discussion about statistics. All member states are required to provide Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, with data on immigration and asylum in accordance with a regulation that sets out clear and concise rules on what data must be submitted.[1] The purpose of the regulation is to ensure that the data on migration and asylum the member states provide to Eurostat for publication is comparable across all EU countries.