Following on from the first conference held in Rabat in July 2006, the Second Euro-African Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development took place in Paris on 25 November 2008, within the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

It resulted in the sixty countries and twenty international organisations attending this conference adopting a multiannual programme of cooperation based on the three points of the global approach to migration: legal migration, combating illegal migration, and synergies between migration and development policy.

This cooperation programme drew inspiration from the conclusions of three meetings of experts that were held in Rabat in March 2008 (legal migration), in Ouagadougou in May 2008 (combating illegal migration), and in Dakar in July 2008 (migration and development). These three meetings set out a series of operational procedures which can begin to be swiftly implemented. All are aimed at strengthening cooperation between Europe and Africa in all matters relating to the migration route from West Africa.