Seven years ago, at the European Council in Thessaloniki, the Heads of State and Government called for more discussion on integration between Member States with a view to learning from one another. The European Commission, in cooperation with the National Contact Points on Integration, experts who meet together regularly, decided to draw up a handbook of good practice.

Today, we present this third edition of the handbook. It covers subjects of great importance : ‘the mass media and integration’, ‘awareness-raising and migrant empowerment’, ‘dialogue platforms’, ‘acquisition of nationality and practice of active citizenship’, ‘immigrant youth, education and the labour market’. Almost 600 experts, from Governments and representing civil society, worked for over 18 months to exchange ideas on these crucial topics. The result is the vast range of inspiring, concrete examples contained in this edition of the handbook. But this handbook is not the only fruit of the experts’ work. Seven years, three editions, fourteen technical seminars, the involvement of several hundred people : all this created a connected, well-functioning community of practitioners.

Challenges in this area persist, but the handbook takes us a step further in finding common solutions to meet them. In previous editions we dealt with introduction programmes, civic participation, indicators, mainstreaming, urban housing, economic integration and integration governance. With this third edition, almost all areas of relevance identified by the Common Basic Principles agreed by Member States back in 2004 have been covered.

This integration community is growing. A forum accessible to all was opened last year – the European Website on Integration. Hundreds of good practices have been added to keep inspiring us, often leading to new, excellent ideas and projects. Some of these are funded by the European Fund for Integration.

Further reading