Asylum Group 8 

Asylum Group 8 aims:

  • To exchange in an informal way country of origin information (COI), migration information, benchmarking and best practices, related to asylum and migration questions;
  • To exchange in an informal way information about asylum and migration procedures between the participating countries;
  • To exchange in an informal way information on international projects in which the A8 members are involved, the international projects they want to do in the future and possible co-operation in international projects amongst A8 members;
  • To establish and to cultivate a network among the COI-units and/or International Units of the participating members;
  • To make ? wherever possible ? optimal use of synergies between the participating offices and, by doing so, reduce the costs for the gathering of COI in the participating states;
  • Organisation of expert-meetings (not only concerning COI questions);
  • The project started in 1993 with Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland and is open-ended;
  • Through this project closer links between the six offices were established. Fast information exchange (e.g. on COI, asylum policy) was established and intensified;
  • Taking the latest decrease in asylum applications into consideration, the project is changing its focus away from asylum-related questions and more towards other managed migration topics.