A delegation of national and international experts from the Council of Europe, accompanied by members of the Secretariat, carried out visits to the Finnish municipalities of Hämeenlinna, Kuopio, Tampere, Turku and Vaasa following the development of individual Intercultural Cities (ICC) Index Analysis Reports for each city.

The delegation was welcomed by Finnish officials during the week of 3-7 June 2024. The visit aimed to present and discuss the results and recommendations of the ICC Index analysis reports in more detail. The visits were also used as an opportunity to initiate the development of tailor-made strategies and tools for the needs of each municipality, including discussions with relevant actors in the areas of inclusion and integration. On these occasions, fruitful exchanges were fostered between the political and more practical implementation levels as well as relevant stakeholders including civil society representatives and the private sector. This allowed all involved local actors to better identify and prioritise areas for improvement, find new ways of addressing emerging challenges, while discussing and validating the findings of the Index Reports.

In each municipality, the state of play of the ongoing and upcoming work in the fields of diversity and integration was presented to the delegation and placed in the context of the specific ICC Index analysis provided in the report. Subsequently, contextual field visits were organised by municipalities to display the work on interculturalism being carried out in the field.

Overall, the recommendations of the reports raised great interest from Finnish municipalities, as some of them have already been incorporated in relevant local strategies and started being implemented.

These expert visits were organised in the framework of the EU/CoE joint project “Building an inclusive integration approach in Finland” which aims to contribute to the ongoing reform on migrant integration and inclusion in Finland.