Benchmarking is a tool for policy improvement based on the identification of key areas of improvement, setting standards and indicators, searching for best practices that meet those standards, and adapting policies from lessons learned to meet and exceed these standards.
The European Union's Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council of 19 November 2004 adopted the Common Basic Principles (CBP), a simple non-binding guide with which Member States can judge and assess their integration policies. CBP 11 concerns the development of "indicators and evaluation mechanisms to adjust policy ,evaluate progress and make the exchange of information more effective". For more on benchmarking integration policies and MIPEX, see Niessen and Huddleston, Setting up a System of Benchmarking to Measure the Success of Integration Policies in Europe (European Parliament, 2007) and European Council, Conclusions on the establishment of Common Basic Principles for immigrant integration policy in the European Union, 13973/04 MIGR 96.
