The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) is an international organisation which makes policy recommendations on migration-related issues to governments and intergovernmental agencies. Founded by Austria and Switzerland as a think tank in 1993, and headquartered in Vienna, Austria. It has changed to directly implementing border control projects, organizing the procurement for border upgrades, is involved in designing curricula for police training programs and in designing surveillance technology. As of May 2023 ICMPD was composed of 20 member states. Current director Michael Spindelegger has been arguing for a more efficient deportation policy. and prescreening.
Financing
As of May 2023, ICMPD did not disclose on its website how it was financed. Figures were only disclosed by the German government upon request by Andrej Hunko, Michel Brandt, Christine Buchholz, other MEPs and the Die Linke. As of 2020 the annual membership fee for Germany was 210,000 euros.
In 2015 its budget was 16.8 million euros, in 2022 it was already 74.5 million, 56 percent of which came from the EU Commission. Also, as an international organization, ICMPD has hardly been subject to financial transparency obligations.
As of 2021, ICMPD has been implementing the "integrated border management programme" together with the Italian Ministry of the Interior, which is financed by the EU Trust Fund for Africa (2021-2027) over € 7.39 billion.
Projects
ICMPD was originally founded as a civilian think tank, and until 2015 it was focused on Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Since January 2019, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands have been co-financing the 400,000 euros "RESTART" project to build resettlement (consistently called "reintegration") for Armenian refugees (called "returnees") over a period of 24 months. Germany has participated in co-financing the construction of a temporary reception center for asylum seekers in Armenia with 158,000 euros. The project has intended to promote voluntary return, resettlement in the home country by means of benefits in kind in the form of social advice and support, among other things, with the help of finding accommodation, visits to authorities, children’s schooling, medical matters and assistance in job search and vocational training, the long-term improvement of living conditions of the returnees and the prevention of new irregular migration to Germany and Europe and fighting the causes of flight.
Under a so called "migration and diaspora program", ICMPD carried out training on behalf of the German Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on "development-oriented migration" with Albania, Ecuador, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia, Colombia, Kosovo and Serbia, which it calls "partner countries". GIZ has also cooperated with ICMPD in prevention and combat of human trafficking in the Western Balkans.
Since 2016 ICMPD has moved its focus to North African countries, like Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and directly implements border control projects, organizes the procurement for border upgrades; it is involved in designing curricula for police training programs and in developing surveillance technology.
In October 2020, the Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) wrote to then Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer, he planned to implement a special kind of digital refugee card in Bavaria, which could serve as a debit card, in cooperation with Spindelegger and the ICMPD, which would serve as a model for similar projects in Europe. Seehofer even described the plan as a "lighthouse project". The idea of the debit card carrying other personal data, which could be retrieved by police terminals was developed by Jan Marsalek then CFO of the now defunct wirecard.
In April 2023, NGO "SOS Balkan Route" criticized the involvement of the ICMPD with the refugee camp Lipa. The ICMPD denied the allegations and initiated legal action against the NGO in Mai. The NGO considers this a SLAPP lawsuit.