Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and be a witness. Thinking about what I am going to say about migration and your ongoing preparation of the reports, I can definitely assure you that there is quite a lot the European Union a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I can go back to the presentation. I will not read it again, don't worry, but I will come back to you and I will tell you exactly what the figures are if we split it among the years. We had 1.3 million in 2015. The figure was more or less the same in 2016. In 2017 it droppe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is a very complex question, and I will try to be as concise as I can. I think we need to split the arrival of migrants to the European Union via different kinds of routes, and I think the main reasons for people migrating to Europe would have different backgrounds. First of

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would like to mention specifically here several things linked with our Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean. The mandate of that operation, which is the EU's operation together with member states, gave in 2016 the possibility of arresting smugglers and taking away the means of

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The Dublin agreement is under revision at the moment. The European Commission presented its proposals to the European Council. At the moment, it is for the member states to discuss and come up with a final decision. It is evident that the Dublin arrangement should be revisited.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That definitely would be—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the things that played an important role for addressing the Dublin arrangement was that in order to avoid possibilities of migrants arriving in Europe and shopping for a country, we needed to have all the database, fingerprinting and applications done at the first stop, in

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have several approaches. One approach is that for those who have skills, we are facilitating their integration into the labour market. Some of the EU member states are very keen to make sure that integration is happening fast. They facilitate, let's say, the openness of the bu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, very briefly, we have had several private endeavours that have helped to save lives on the sea. That activity has been provided by private sponsors, Médecins Sans Frontières and others, who actually chartered the ships. A large part of their financing came from private group

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are two answers to your question. First of all, I can't speak on behalf of EU member states because visa applications and visas—and that would be for any kind of third-country person outside of the EU who has applied for a visa and is travelling to the EU—are the prerogati

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Therefore, for us, the key point is the personnel and the availability of the numbers of people who would tackle the given numbers.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  With regard to language training, definitely.... That is one of the key issues for any migrant arriving in the territory of the European Union. Again, that will depend from country to country where the migrant would arrive, be settled and stay. To my knowledge, social systems o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the priorities we try to address when the migrants arriving in Europe are registered is whether or not they already have some relatives in the EU. They might travel to the EU or undertake very dangerous trips across the sea basically for reuniting with the family. If that