The Western Balkans face growing migration challenges requiring robust, harmonised data for effective policy planning and alignment with EU standards. The Migration, Asylum, Refugees Regional Initiative (MARRI) has established the Permanent Working Group on Migration Statistics (PWGMS) to advance regional cooperation and improve statistical capacities, as one of the key precursors of the effective public sector response to the respective policy challenges.

As the principal organizer, MARRI will be responsible for the thematic segment and expert inputs, in cooperation with IoM, to further advance PWGMS' capacities and outreach. ReSPA will partner with them to ensure this event contributes to the regional cooperation among the public sector professionals. Furthermore, this event aligns closely with the ReSPA goals, which focus on enhancing administrative capacities for policy planning and supporting the EU integration agenda, and with the EU Chapters 24 - Justice, freedom and security - and Chapter 18 - Statistics.

This event will strengthen the capacity of civil servants from WB6 in migration statistics, ensuring data quality, comparability, and alignment with Eurostat methodologies. The workshop will further foster peer-to-peer learning, sharing best practices among WB Administrations, enhance regional cooperation, and most importantly, provide inputs by experts from the EU statistical administration, to share their experience and working methods