1. Balance 2002 – 2012
By Christoph Hauschild
Let me start with a personal remark:
Today – with this conference – a circle is closing to me:
It was during the previous Danish presidency in the year 2002 that for the first
time in my professional career I got in touch with the issue of immigrant
integration. In October 2002 the Danish Presidency had invited the Minister of
the Interior to attend a ministerial meeting on integration issues in Copenhagen.
At that time there was not yet a special unit for immigrant integration in the
ministry. The choise fell on me for writing the speaking note. In 2002 this was as
well a start for me. Beginning of next month I will change my position in the
ministry and I will move to a completely different field of activity. So this 2012
conference under Danish presidency will put an end to my work on immigrant
integration.
For that reason please allow me to draw a short balance:
At national level we witnessed a paradigmatic change on how we look at the
integration issue. I think this is true not only for Germany but for several
European countries. Let me therefore refer to little booklet called “The
Government’s Vision and Strategies for Improved Integration” edited by the
Danish Government in June 2003.
Two points mentioned in that policy programme were very much relevant to our
thinking and policy making with regard to immigrant integration in the last ten
years:
Firstly, strengthening the link between immigration policy and integration
policy.
Secondly, putting the focus on individual needs independent from the national,
ethnic or religious background. The 2003 Danish Government paper says in this
respect we must base integration on the individual’s resources and responsibility

2. and that one has to move away from the clientification of immigrants arriving in
the country. “It is not a social occurrence to arrive in Denmark”
At the European level we started a learning process in 2002. But what we
witnessed is what we call in German “Europaeisierung” – Europanisation of
that policy field reflected in a new European competence in the Treaty of
Lisbon. I had the priviledge of having been involved in every step of it including
the drafting of the Treaty provision. Starting in 2004 in Groningen I assisted to
all ministerial ministerial EU meetings on integration.
Making European policies practical
The idea of designing integration modules came-up when it became clear that
the Commission would put an end to the so-called handbook exercise. Through
the handbook seminars - which were organized by the Member States
themselves - we were able to put the European learning process into practice.
The turned out to be very useful for getting to know the different national
approaches. However, we made as well the experience that although touching a
lot of different issues, we didn’t achieve to be able to deal with those issues in
detail. But when you are in charge if designing a new policy programme or when
you are asked to improve existing programmes you are expected to present
technical solutions. Take the example of language programmes: you have to
take a decion on who is the target group, on how to organize the access to
courses, on how to control the outcome etc.
So the aim attached to the modules was to deepen that European learning
process and making it more practical. The draft modules reflect that initial
purpose. However, from my point of view and I repeat here what I said before in
other meetings a mistake was made with regard to the involvement of Member
States. The whole process of developing the modules was out-sourced to a
consulting company with too little involvement of the Member States. The
challenge is now to transform those modules into a tool box for Member States.
From an institutional point it would be crucial that Member States are much
more part of the process than before. This, however, requires on the side of the

3. Member States to be available for an active involvement. The European Union
almost doubled in size within the last ten years. The question is should all of
them be involved or should those Member States which have a particular
interest in the issue be permitted to go ahead. The best would be to have every
Member State on board, actually because I don’t see any Member State who
shouldn’t be concerned. My advice would be therefore to have an open debate
on this in the framework of the National Contact Points and to move on on the
basis of that discussion.
Let me add a general observation: The module exercise illustrates again that in
policy making you have to be always aware of the fact that procedures matter.
Integration debate
Part of the balance of the last ten years is that we never talked about what we
understand under the term of integration. There has been always the risk that
we use the same word of latin origin, but in our national languages we attach
different meanings to it. In some countries only newcomers are referred to when
there is a debate on immigrant integration in other countries we see a much
more extensive use. Actually and that also happened within the last decade in
Germany, the term persons with a migratory background was invented by our
national statistical office. The definition of that statistical category is so far
reaching that persons who have never thought about it in their previous life are
confronted now with the fact that they have become a target group of
integration policies.
Conclusion: social trust
This leads me to my final observation: Maybe we do not need at the European
level a common definition of the term integration, but part of the European
debate should be the issue on the impact of migration on social cohesion. I say
this because we have currently two conflicting findings in research on that
issue. Some say that immigration is automatically contributing to the cultural
richness and that this new diversity is strengthening our societies. A very recent
study base on interviews with 10.000 persons on the impact of ethnic diversity

4. on social trust is much more cautious on this aspect. According to the head of
the project team Ruud Koopmans who is a Dutch professor working in Berlin
the empirical evidence study shows that immigration does have indeed an
impact on social trust. He says that there is already a negative impact on social
trust when the ethnic diversity in a certain neighborhood becomes a pubic
issue.
Let me therefore conclude: We should surely go on in developing European
tools, but at the same time we need a debate in the impact of our work.