On 12 December 2018, the Belgian contact point of the EMN organized its annual asylum and migration policy event in which recent national and EU developments in the field of international protection, legal migration and integration and irregular migration, human trafficking and return were discussed. 

The results of the third sociomonitoring report, published in December 2017, will be presented by the Federal Public Service Employment and Unia, in order to better understand the situation of persons on the labour market according to their origin.

The panel discussion will present the findings of the recently completed research project of the European Foundation for Democracy which examined how different European countries with high numbers of refugees and/or experience of integrating high numbers of refugees are managing the integration process and identifies good practices for integrating refugees. The research looked in particular at the situation of Syrian refugees in Europe, though not exclusively.

Following the release of its EASO Guidance on reception conditions: operational standards and indicators in December 2016, EASO has just issued the EASO guidance on contingency planning in the context of reception.

The government approved on 24 March 2018 a new reduction plan for reception places for applicants for international protection. Today the reception network consists of 23,815 reception places. This should be reduced to 16,629 reception places in 2019, of which 10,044 collective places and 6,585 individual reception places. With this plan, the network returns to the level preceding the reception crisis.

As of 1 January 2018, certain third-country nationals have the obligation to follow an integration programme in the German-speaking Community.