Migrants To Receive ‘Values’ Folders To Assist Integration

Migrants crossing the border into Austria are to be presented with material explaining European values, which they will be urged to adopt.

The information – stressing the values of tolerance and inclusion – will be presented to migrants in folders when the programme begins in a few weeks time. It follows previous efforts at schooling newcomers in European values which were conceived for migrants arriving in Austria from the West Balkans in 2010, reports The Local.

This plan is one part of a wider package of measures to be adopted across the European Union (EU) currently under discussion at a conference in Sarajevo. Member states have already implemented some proposed measures – for example Austria has set up a counselling centre for the prevention of terrorism and is setting up a dedicated police training programme aimed at the earlier identification of radicalisation in young Muslims.

The folders will also contain information specifically targeted at Muslim women. Despite a recent call in Germany for a burqa ban reported by Breitbart London, female Muslims will be told they are free to wear a headscarf if they choose to do so, but not because they have been ordered to by a man. It will also stress that European girls have an equal right to education at every level.

Austria’s Minister of the Interior, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, is a key player in the Sarajevo conference. She spoke about some of the European values to be set out in the folders, referring to how traditional Muslim attitudes may clash with European approaches to education, to women in authority and to conflicts between religion and the law.

“It’s not acceptable that some migrant men would fail to respect a policewoman because she is a woman,” she explained, “Religion cannot supersede state laws and become used for radicalisation.”

Calls for immigrants to Europe to adapt to their new country’s culture and not expect others to adapt to them have already been heard, as previously reported by Breitbart London, and this is not the first time authorities have tried to promote European values during the ongoing migrant crisis.

For example in Germany an effort to promote integration saw some migrants receive Arabic translations of the first 20 articles of the country’s constitution – the Grundgesetz – which outline basic rights like freedom of speech.

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