04/09/2026
📖 Coming soon: a new FBE publication on unaccompanied minors - Infrastructure to host unaccompanied minors.
Across Europe, most unaccompanied minors fall under child protection frameworks rather than standard asylum systems. In 2024, 36,290 unaccompanied minors lodged a first asylum application in the EU, accounting for 15.9% of all child applicants. Once recognised as such, what protection and care do they actually receive?
Building on its 2023 guidelines on age assessment and the application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the FBE Unaccompanied Minors Committee has prepared a new comparative study examining how France 🇫🇷, Germany 🇩🇪, Italy 🇮🇹, Spain 🇪🇸 and Switzerland 🇨🇭 organise (i) welcome and accommodation, (ii) education, (iii) administrative infrastructure, and (iv) medical care for unaccompanied minors. For each of these areas, the Committee identifies current practices and best practices, with a view to proposing stronger protection standards for unaccompanied children across Europe.
Legislation in this field evolves constantly. The guide is therefore designed above all as a practical map, enabling practitioners to quickly identify the relevant central authority or competent entity able to provide up-to-date information, together with detailed national annexes listing concrete institutional contacts and resources.
👉 You will soon access to this publication on FBE website !
Our sincere thanks to the members of the Committee across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland for their work in the best interest of the child.
RuleOfLaw UnaccompaniedMinors
Josine Bitton, Andres de Ceballos, Viviana di Bartolomeo, Estelle Donati, Mélanie Duverney Pret, Adeline Himpens, Maria Itziar, Kathryn Kruglak, Giacomo Melotti, Livio Natale, Milena Peeva, Beatrice Rigotti, Céline Squaratti ,Barbara Wilsing