What is the specific problem?

Disinformation around migration continues to spread across the EU, influencing public perceptions and institutional practices. Media coverage often associates migration with crime and economic decline, leading to anti-immigrant sentiment, hate speech, and social division. Racist violence, hate speech and discrimination against asylum seekers and migrants persists despite the awareness efforts of institutions such as the European Commission. A key challenge is the lack of systematic recording of discriminatory policing, ethnic profiling, racist violence and hate speech, which limits comprehensive efforts and effective responses.

What is the goal of this action?

This action addresses migration disinformation by aiming to strengthen institutional resilience and its impact on civil servants’ daily work. It focuses on mapping institutional challenges, delivering practical capacity-building sessions, and evaluating progress to ensure continuous improvement in education and awareness raising.   

This action is strongly linked to DG HOME’s Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion, and it aligns with the Action Plan’s emphasis on building strong partnerships between multiple actors in society. It encourages collaboration between public authorities, migrant-led organisations, media, and policymakers to support inclusive governance and positive narratives. 

Local, regional, national, and EU authorities all play a crucial role in fostering inclusive societies by facilitating intercultural dialogue and promoting positive narratives around migration. This spans all governance levels - local, regional, national, and European -  aiming to influence public perceptions, policy implementation, and social cohesion on a global scale.

The specific objectives of this action are:

• Collaboratively mapping current institutional challenges and needs by launching a brief self-assessment survey that frames why combatting migration disinformation matters for civil servants (September 2025–March 2026) 

• Delivering a series of three interactive online capacity-building sessions informed by pre-session surveys, engaging experts and stakeholders to provide practical tools and strategies (April–October 2026) 

• Evaluating the effectiveness of the capacity-building sessions against the initial self-assessment, comparing outcomes and gathering feedback for continuous improvement (September 2026–March 2027).