Inform: Policies and practices on return counselling for migrants in EU Member States and Norway

Return counselling has a critical role to play in supporting third-country nationals in making informed decisions about their possibilities to legally stay in Europe or to return, and thus to ensure safe and dignified return.

There is therefore a growing interest among policy makers to understand how return counselling works in practice. How is the purpose is return counselling defined across (Member) States and organisations providing counselling across Europe? What approaches are used? To whom is counselling available at what migration stage?

This EMN Inform explores these issues, based on information collected from EMN National Contact Points as well as from non- governmental organisations and international organisations engaged in delivering return counselling.

This report is part of a series of three EMN informs addressing the topic of return counselling. The next two publications in the series will focus on:

• Policies and practices for the support of return counsellors in their role to provide migrants with timely, unbiased and reliable information on return;
• Policies and practices on outreach and information provision for the (voluntary) return of migrants.

Click here to download the Inform