On 10th November, the EUAA Consultative Forum organised its 1st Plenary Meeting in Malta. This plenary meeting provided an opportunity for the new members of the EUAA Consultative Forum to meet, to exchange initial ideas on the Forum’s working methods and to vote for and elect the CF Chairperson ad interim.   This year’s meeting was exclusively open to the newly appointed Consultative Forum members with more than 70 members attending the event.  During the first part of the meeting, the members were presented with detailed information about the work of the Agency and had the opportunity to share opinions and thoughts on the current situation of asylum in the EU with the Agency’s Heads of Centres during the question-and-answer session.

The meeting was opened by Ms Nina Gregori, Executive Director of the Agency, who during her introductory remarks welcomed the new Members and highlighted the importance of having established the new EUAA Consultative Forum.  Ms Gregori also underlined and welcomed the diversity of the Forum Members which would undoubtedly add value to the Agency’s work.

During the final segment of the morning, the Consultative Forum elected its first Chair ad interim, Dr. Sarah Adeyinka, who is the founder of the NGO CoCreate.  Dr Adeyinka will now guide the Forum to  produce its working methods, which, as per the Regulation, need to be established by the Forum itself.  

The afternoon programme was dedicated to discussions about the development of the Forum’s working methods.  The members were divided into small groups, each group focused on key elements for the working methods, such as governance, planning and implementation of CF activities including decision-making, communication channels and tools, etc.  This session was expertly moderated by an external contractor, Visuality, and all the participants had the opportunity to take an active part in all the elements discussed.  

Meeting documents:

• Agenda
• Presentations
• Background note for discussions on the working methods
• Graphic recordings [1] - [2]
• EUAA news item
• Photos from the event

On the 25th of May, the Consultative Forum in collaboration with colleagues from the Information and Analysis Sector organised a webinar on the ‘Who is who in International Protection’ mapping project.  The webinar, which was followed by around 30 civil society organisations,  provided a live demonstration of the ‘Who is who’ project developed by the EUAA, which maps all the different stakeholders and their role in asylum and reception at European, national and local levels. The overall project will feed into a publicly available overview of all relevant actors with the following two main outputs i) a one-time publication listing and describing all stakeholders grouped per thematic activity, and ii) an online available database including an overview of all stakeholders which will be regularly updated. 

During the webinar, participants were introduced to the civil society component of the Who is Who project. Under this component, the aim is to map relevant civil society organisations active in the field of asylum. Participants were presented with the draft survey that will be used for this mapping.  The next steps of the project were also discussed with the participants and valuable feedback was collected from respective civil society organisations.  On 1st June,  an invitation was shared inviting interested civil society organisations with expertise in the area of asylum and migration to participate in the information collection exercise by filling out the following survey. The plan is to have the civil society section ready by the first quarter in 2023.  

Find more information on the ‘Who is who’ project.

Meeting documents:

• Agenda
• Concept Note  
• Presentation slides 

For any questions please write to: Consultative-Forum@euaa.europa.eu