The new regional project on migration in the Euro-Mediterranean area, EuroMed Migration II with a budget of 5 Million Euro, funded by the European Commission, is part of a wider programme on the Justice and Home Affairs sector, approved in 2006, comprising other two regional projects in the field of Justice and Police cooperation: EuroMed Justice II and EuroMed Police II.
This project is based on the Euro-Mediterranean partnership which started since the Barcelona Declaration (1995) and its subsequent evolution with the Five Year Work Programme of the Barcelona Summit (28 November 2005). This Programme calls for enhanced cooperation in the fields of Migration, Social Integration, Justice and Security through a comprehensive and integrated approach, reiterating the continued support for the objectives set out in paragraphs 11 and 12 of that Programme, while highlighting the need for improved practical cooperation at regional level.
It takes account of the 8th and 9th Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Tampere, 27-28 November 2006 and Lisbon, 5-6 November 2007 respectively), which emphasized the need to strengthen the management of migratory flows in a comprehensive, integrated and balanced manner beneficial to the Euro-Mediterranean peoples and the need to increase cooperation in the fields of legal migration, migration and development and illegal migration. [+]