Towards Harmonised European Statistics on International Migration

The European Union faces an urgent need for better statistics on migration and asylum to support the development of a common EU migration policy. The forthcoming EU Regulation on international migration and asylum statistics will be voted on by the European Parliament in order to improve statistical data collection in terms of availability, reliability and comparability. Within the EU's 6th Framework Programme for Research, the THESIM project was selected in order to support the implementation of this regulation and to help individual country to fulfil their task in relation with the regulation. THESIM is an acronym for Towards Harmonised European Statistics on International Migration. The project started in April 2004 and ended in August 2005. It involved 7 different scientific teams from 7 different EU countries under the co-ordination of Michel Poulain (Belgium). To get a general idea of the project, you can download the THESIM poster.