No Border Summit Vienna: Countering ICMPD

October 15th, 2025

No Border Summit Wien: Mit transnationaler Solidarität gegen die Wiener Migrationskonferenz des ICMPD

Einladung auf Deutsch hier

What’s happening in Vienna — and why we answer

On 21–22 October, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) hosts the 10th annual Vienna Migration Conference (VMC), a closed-door, high-level gathering that shapes what the EU calls “migration management.” (VMC site. In Vienna, politicians and officials will again meet to discuss policies that exclude, deter, deport—and kill—with minimal public scrutiny. This year, we refuse to let that go unanswered or slip past public attention. Our response is the No Border Summit (17–21 October): an open, self-organized, citywide space—a counter-forum of discussion, art, learning, and organizing—that insists on freedom of movement and freedom to stay for all (No Border Summit site: abolishicmpd.noblogs.org).

What is the ICMPD?

The ICMPD was founded in 1993 by Austria and Switzerland and is headquartered in Vienna as an intergovernmental organization. It is governed by a Steering Group of Member States and enjoys privileged legal status in Austria through a host-state agreement that grants the immunities typical of an international organization. (FragDenStaat 2023; RIS host-state agreement; ICMPD “About”)

Since its founding by Austria and Switzerland—and, over the last decade, under continuous leadership from Austria’s conservative ÖVP (first Michael Spindelegger, with Susanne Raab elected to follow)—the ICMPD has evolved into a driving think tank for a policy line that strips rights from people seeking protection and criminalizes migration. At the same time, it increasingly acts as a coordinating and implementing contractor on the ground: brokering and running projects that equip border and surveillance systems and train police and security forces, especially along the EU’s external routes. (FragDenStaat 2023; RLS—“Decrypting ICMPD”; FTM—“Follow the Money”)

Since 2016, the organization has scaled up: staff above 500, operations in 30+ offices across 90+ countries, and budget growth to roughly €100 million by 2024—financed largely through project grants from the European Commission and other donors, alongside member contributions. (ICMPD Annual Reports 2023/2024; ICMPD news)

The ICMPD presents itself as a neutral platform offering research and “migration management” advice; in practice it helps design governance architectures and operational tools that harden Europe’s border regime and shift it outward onto third countries. (RLS—“Decrypting ICMPD”; FragDenStaat 2023; FTM—“Follow the Money”)

What ICMPD does — and why it matters

Beyond research and conferences, ICMPD designs and implements policies that externalize EU border control—from capacity-building for police and border agencies to return/readmission schemes and “migration dialogues” that align third-country ministries with EU priorities. Its Migration Outlooks place control, externalization, and return at the center of the EU agenda, revealing how the organization frames both problems and “solutions.” (FragDenStaat 2023; RLS—“Decrypting ICMPD”; ICMPD project pages; ICMPD Migration Outlook 2024/2025)

Accountability gap

As an international organization, ICMPD operates outside ordinary transparency rules and democratic oversight while shaping policies with profound human consequences. This exceptional status enables closed-door coordination among EU member states, agencies, contractors, and select experts—allowing dehumanizing, authoritarian migration measures to be developed and advanced away from public scrutiny. (FragDenStaat 2023; RIS host-state agreement; FTM 2024 on Brussels networks and contracting)

ICMPD’s own materials underscore its role as policy adviser and capacity-building contractor: equipping authorities and building information systems used to register, sort, and remove people from EU territory. In sum, it functions as a high-leverage intermediary for the EU’s deadly border regime—inside the EU and beyond—shaping strategy, drafting toolkits, convening decision-makers, and running projects from externalization schemes to in-EU surveillance, returns, and detention, all with little public oversight. (ICMPD “About/Regions”; your Master’s thesis; FragDenStaat 2023; FTM 2024; RLS—“Decrypting ICMPD”)

Austria’s central role

Austria acts as an informal broker within the EU’s migration regime. ICMPD’s leadership has consistently been held by figures from Austria’s conservative ÖVP—Michael Spindelegger (2016–2025) and, elected to take over on 1 January 2026, Susanne Raab—reflecting a leadership continuity aligned with a party known for restrictive migration policies. (ICMPD press release; VMC/ICMPD pages)

This continuity mirrors Austria’s hub function: hosting ICMPD while also running operational platforms from Vienna that knit together returns, policing, and data exchange across the Western Balkans and beyond. (Monroy 2022; AED/EMPACT; BMI)

  • Joint Coordination Platform (JCP) — housed in the Interior Ministry — focuses on border management, returns, anti-smuggling, and “strengthening asylum systems” along the Western Balkans; initiated by Austria in 2021 and led by a former Frontex vice-president, it steers externalized control, deportations, cooperation with third countries, and accelerated procedures. (BMI/JCP page; Austrian parliamentary reply; Statewatch—JCP declaration)
  • Joint Operational Office (JOO) — opened in Vienna in 2016 — functions as a regional Europol hub against so-called “human smuggling,” coordinating cross-border police work. (Europol; Austrian Federal Criminal Police)

These Vienna-based platforms operate in the grey zone between national and EU competences—often stepping in where Frontex’s mandate ends, especially on the Western Balkans route. They coordinate removals, train police, and advise interior ministries, yet their day-to-day operations remain opaque. Though established by the Austrian federal government and housed in the BMI, they work largely informally and with scant democratic oversight. (Salzburg Forum materials; BMI/DE press; Statewatch document collection)

From paper to practice: ICMPD’s projects and impacts

The Vienna-based think tank has helped set the tone for many of the authoritarian migration policies implemented in recent years. This includes high-profile recommendations such as payment cards for asylum seekers—rolled out in Germany and, in even more restrictive form, in Lower Austria—as well as the outsourcing of asylum procedures to EU external borders and third countries. At the operational level, ICMPD’s “capacity-building” across North Africa and the Western Balkans has often meant equipping and training security forces, embedding surveillance systems, and facilitating readmission and containment far from EU courts. (RLS—“Decrypting ICMPD”; ICMPD project docs) Some more examples of ICMPD projects:

  • Algeria–Tunisia–Libya. Documentation of ICMPD-linked programs shows how EU externalization deepens manufactured precarity and danger for people on the move. (Naceur/FTDES 2025)
  • Bosnia’s Lipa camp. ICMPD was involved in advancing a detention–expulsion facility at Lipa—a plan widely condemned by human-rights groups and ultimately stopped through local organizing. (SOS Balkanroute)
  • Shaping the EU Pact. ICMPD discussion papers, read alongside the Council’s third-countries implementation note, point to a policy drive toward offshoring and accelerated returns. (ICMPD papers/Outlooks; EU Council 5996/25 via Statewatch)

Human-rights bodies warn that externalization shifts harm by design—enabling pushbacks, detention and abuses outside EU territory while blurring legal responsibility. (Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, 2025)

The Vienna Migration Conference: staging the consensus

Since 2016, ICMPD has convened the Vienna Migration Conference each autumn to consolidate a security-centered consensus among ministers, EU officials, and selected experts and partners (including counterparts from African and Asian governments), presenting border security as common sense and “migration management” as humanitarian efficiency. (ICMPD VMC pages; VMC reports) The VMC2025 program again pivots around the EU Pact, “partnerships” with priority third countries, and the expansion of return policies—the very agenda we contest. (VMC site; ICMPD Outlooks)

Ten years after the “Long Summer of Migration”: from memory to action

Ten years after the “Long Summer of Migration”—when, in September–October 2015, people collectively opened corridors from Greece to Sweden and briefly broke the Dublin regime, proving that freedom of movement is both possible and life-saving (Trans-Border Network — Chain of Actions call)—the backlash has been brutal: fast-track screening, pushbacks, detention, and a web of deals that outsource violence to “partners” from Tunisia to Libya and beyond, while governments celebrate deterrence and externalization even as deaths at the borders persist, grow, and mutate. Yet we are still here: this autumn, movements are weaving a Transnational Chain of Actions—linking mobilizations from Lampedusa to Berlin, Rabat to Rome, Geneva to Vienna—to commemorate the March of Hope and confront today’s regime of containment, to remember, resist, and rebuild infrastructures of solidarity).

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No Border Summit Vienna (17–21 Oct): join us

From 17–21 October, we open a counter-space in Vienna—the No Border Summit—with workshops, discussions, music, readings, and shared meals. We center the knowledge and agency of people directly affected by EU migration policies—voices too often silenced or criminalized. (No Border Summit site) We will exchange tactics, tell stories, and build practical solidarities across cities and borders. Full program details are published on abolishicmpd.noblogs.org . We close the summit on Tuesday, 21 October, by turning collective energy into action: a citywide demonstration – let´s take the streets - abolish ICMPD and the deadly EU-migration regime.

We oppose ICMPD’s role in engineering a deadly border regime with minimal accountability—and Austria’s enabling of offshoring, deportations, and police cooperation through platforms like JCP and JOO. (FragDenStaat 2023; FTM 2024; BMI/JCP; Europol—JOO) We demand freedom of movement and freedom to stay: safe routes, dignified reception, and residence rights for all. We work to build alternatives to the dehumanizing “migration-defense” discourse that dominates EU- and Austrian media and politics—and that the Vienna Migration Conference exemplifies. Our answer is organized resistance and solidarity—necessary counter-power against an illegitimate and lethal system that should not be „managed more efficiently“, but dismantled and abolished.

We stand in solidarity with the Days of Action in Rome in mid-October and extend that solidarity to everyone, everywhere, in this struggle. (Trans-Border call — Rome actions)

Freedom of movement. Freedom to stay. We call for safe routes, an end to criminalization, and dignified lives for all—because borders kill. For a politics of transnational solidarity, not deterrence. No one is illegal—and no corporation or government has the right to decide who gets to live in safety and who does not. Another Europe is possible, and already being built in acts of everyday solidarity.

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Follow-ups: After the Summit, we will publish documentation of events and a deeper article on ICMPD and JCP—for further reading and mobilization.

References

Official documents & conference materials

Investigations, reports & analysis (ICMPD/externalisation)

Austria’s role, JCP & JOO (nodes in Vienna)

Case studies & media coverage

Movement calls & documentation

Additional context

  • Maldusa. (n.d.). Europe’s digital fortress: how Palestine is the laboratory for testing surveillance equipment sold to the EU. https://www.maldusa.org/l/europes-digital-fortress-how-palestine-is-the-laboratory-for-testing-surveillance-equipment-sold-to-the-eu/
  • Hess, S. (2010). “‘We are facilitating states!’ An ethnographic analysis of the ICMPD.” In M. Geiger & A. Pécoud (Eds.), The Politics of International Migration Management. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Becker, M. (2023). Austria’s attempts to control movement of migration: The relation between migratory movements and border practices at the border areas between Austria–Hungary and Hungary–Serbia. Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights thesis, die Angewandte – University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna.
Tags: ICMPD
Posted in All Entries, Campaign, Border Violence, Externalization of borders