European Commission to Award Funding to 12 Refugee Integration Projects

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The European Commission will grant 2.35 million euros ($2.6 million) to 12 projects created for helping refugees to better integrate in Europe, the commission announced on Friday.

"The awarded projects will receive grants worth a total of €2.35 million and involve 62 organizations from 20 countries," the European Commission said in a statement.

In April, the commission started the Creative Europe initiative to generate proposals to help the vast number of refugees arriving in Europe to successfully integrate in the European environment and to enhance mutual cultural understanding and foster intercultural and inter-religious dialogue.

The call attracted 274 applications and the budget was raised from the initial 1.6 million euros following the huge level of participation. A total of 1,124 organizations from 38 countries took part in this initiative, Italy and Sweden were among the best-represented countries with 17 and nine organizations respectively.

Each of the 12 projects will receive around 200,000 euros on average and, once the money is granted, work will begin straight away and run until 2018.

Europe is currently facing a major refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to reach EU member states through various routes, including via Italy, Greece, Turkey and Balkan states.