Switzerland to chair international forum on migration
As chair of the IGC, Switzerland will focus on the theme of integrating migrants and refugees in the labour market.
Keystone / Valentin Flauraud
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: Switzerland to chair international forum on migration
Switzerland will chair the Intergovernmental Consultations on Asylum, Refugees and Migration (IGC) in 2025, the government announced on Monday. It will focus on the theme of migrants in the labour market.
“Migrants and refugees can make an important contribution to economic growth and prosperity,” the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) said in a press release.
The SEM plans to organise several high-level summits around this theme at the IGC, a non-decision-making forum that brings together 17 countries from Europe and overseas. Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans, who is responsible for migration affairs, is expected to attend.
The migration situation in Europe is tense. Italy stopped accepting Dublin cases from other European countries nearly two years ago, while Germany has reintroduced border controls to combat illegal immigration.
In Switzerland, Jans recently suffered a setback, with parliament deciding in December to tighten the conditions for access to temporary protection status S for Ukrainian refugees. However, a year after taking up his post in the government, the Basel-born politician has repeatedly highlighted the positive results achieved in the field of migration, thanks in particular to the fast-track 24-hour asylum procedure.
Switzerland is a founding member of the IGC, whose secretariat is based in Geneva, and is taking on the chair in its 40th anniversary year.
Translated from French with DeepL/gw
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
As a Swiss Abroad, how do you feel about the emergence of more conservative family policies in some US states?
In recent years several US states have adopted more conservative policies on family issues, abortion and education. As a Swiss citizen living there, how do you view this development?
Switzerland budgets CHF 666m to rejoin EU research programmes
This content was published on
Rejoining European Union research programmes, such as Horizon Europe, will cost Switzerland an initial sum of CHF666 million.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.