Europe, for us, European citizens
who have the freedom to travel, live and work wherever we like,
means cities like Paris, Berlin, London and Barcelona.
These are also cites where refugees dream of living.
But for them, it’s a different map, Europe is something very different.
It means places like Lampedusa, Ventimiglia, Idomeni and Kos.
These are places where they find themselves stranded on their road to exile
after fleeing from war and misery in their homelands.
The response to this humanitarian crisis by the member states of the European Union
merely by means of a paranoid border protection,
is the policy of burying your head in the sand,
of pretending that the problem doesn’t exist.
It’s about being as unwelcoming possible,
and about discouraging and rejecting people.
But these refugees or refugees in general, continue to cross borders.
They always get through them and have always done so.
The closing off of borders by EU member states
makes no sense,
and it is very costly in terms of human lifes.
It’s both financially and morally costly.
But, the good news is that once across the border,
this national dimension is less relevant.
The refugees’ dream is an urban dream.
It’s believed that 80% of new arrivals in Europe
want to live in a big city.
This is where are found the reception networks,
families, friends and fellow countrymen.
This is where you have the best shot of finding housing, a job, training,
and of furthering your education.
It turns out to be a good thing because the urban setting
is what will determine the success or failure of integration policies.
I work for this network of cities called “Eurocities.”
My job is to help these cities with their integration policies,
to help them exchange ideas and best practices,
the successes and failures.
The approach used by integrating cities is not ideological.
It’s about being practical.
And being practical for the mayor of a large city
means safeguarding social cohesion,
public order and public health.
It is not a policy against immigrants, refugees and diversity
that will achieve this, but a policy of openness and inclusiveness,
backed by the certainty that a city of this size
can resolve this type of situation.
I work with mayor’s offices, elected officials, and administrations
who received almost the same message:
“We can’t. There is no room. We don’t have the resources.
The general public is not ready, they wouldn’t understand.
Now is not the time.” Well, it’s never the time…
In reality, dozens of major European cities
are proving us wrong every single day.
About the statement: “The public wouldn’t understand,”
a city like Vienna, Austria, for example, has bet the opposite.
When refugees that were trapped in Budapest by the Hungarian government,
chose to walk all the way to Austria,
the first welcome they received was by the Viennese.
When they arrived, they were welcomed at the Vienna train station,
with this letter from city officials.
It started with: “You’re welcome”
and ended with: “Don’t be afraid!”
What a great change already!
Vienna was able to do this because months ahead of time,
they had set up a coordination system with all those of goodwill –
NGOs, churches, public officials and private sector –
and also because the mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl,
instructed all of his municipal employees to pitch in ;
this was their priority now.
He did this just a few weeks before the municipal elections.
He staked his entire political career
on a policy based on humanism, welcomeness and openness.
And in his city, he easily defeated the extreme right in the second round.
The general public is not stupid.
Public opinion can recognize strong political leadership.
Several months after the municipal elections, were the presidential elections.
The extreme right lost in Vienna by 30% in the second round.
There are 50,000 refugees in Vienna who can’t vote.
Yet, Vienna has welcomed today every single last one of them.
We’re also told, of course that there is no room,
we can’t allow these masses of people in,
or that we don’t have the means to accommodate them.
Yet, look at Berlin.
It’s believed that 80,000 refugees has arrived since September 2015
and that 50,000 of them remained there.
The city is in charge of their reception, integration, accommodation,
children’s education, and of course, public order and security.
They were not ready for that and there was a lot of tension.
Plenty of bad press aimed at the city government.
But with a lot of perseverance and will,
the situation is working itself out little by little,
thanks particularly to the help of civil society.
For example, the city requisitioned empty housing, office buildings,
and provided temporary shelters.
It opened up new classes for children.
There’s a talk of 10,000 refugee children in Berlin,
in 900 rapid integration courses.
Berlin has also created a more sustainable approach
by developing the ‘container village’ model.
These are places that allow people to live in community,
where they can cook their own food.
These places have been built in the hearts of neighborhoods,
not like jungles along highways
but in the heart of communities with the intent to integrate the refugees.
All of this is very expensive.
Hamburg for exemple spent more than 360 million in 2014 to welcome refugees,
and spent twice as much in 2015.
But this, in reality, costs less than inaction.
This costs less than an overcautious and indecisive policy.
All of this investment has positive returns
for the local economy.
This is far from perfect, and everyone knows it.
But a city like Berlin currently hosts more than 50,000 refugees
and welcomes new ones everyday.
Finally, we’re told…
that integration is not going to work anyway,
and that we don’t know how to do it and don’t have the skills.
It is true that always applying the same formulas can be a problem.
Cities where public services are already stretched thin
might be pushed to the limit with more arrivals.
But this crisis is precisely the perfect opportunity to develop new ideas.
Sweden received 160,000 people in 2015,
but 30,000 in 2010, it’s a huge change in scale.
These people don’t want to go to Lapland, Sweden’s northernmost region.
They want to go to Malmö, Gothenburg, Stockholm.
These are very attractive cities that draw large amounts of immigrants,
as well as Europeans who want to settle down there.
These cities had proactively created
a partnership with a start-up called “Mobilearn”
in order to provide integration services directly to refugees.
This service is offered in Somali, Persian, Arabic and Kurdish
and it enables you to follow the process step by step
when it comes to education, training, health care,
looking for a job or housing.
It enables you to start learning Swedish in your own native language.
And it enables you essentially to get appropriate local information.
This earns money for cities, or at least, saves them money.
It saves you tons of time, and frees you up for other endeavors.
Best of all, refugees can start integrating from the get-go,
not after six months spent in a shelter once the asylum request has been approved.
That brings significant time savings.
Integration will never work if we always respond with the same ideas.
We need new approaches, new solutions.
A colleague of mine who lives in a large Dutch city, told me jokingly,
“This crisis is amazing!
All the ideas and projects I had shoved away in my drawers
are now being fast-tracked by leaders on a policy level.”
Indeed, we need these solutions,
and the urban setting is perfect for experimentation and innovation.
These are the cities of today: they are welcoming and active,
because the values of solidarity and mutual co-existence
cannot be abstract ideas.
Countries build walls.
Cities try to build bridges.
I believe cities must be fully recognized
as a player in migration and integration policies
because that’s where everything will be decided.
That’s where they will succeed of fail.
Cities are powerless without civil society.
In all of these examples, civil society, associations and volunteers
played a key role.
So, integration is a two-way street.
It’s a responsibility shared between refugees and the host society.
So it’s up to us, citizens of European cities,
to guarantee that we win the bet on integration.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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