The Minister of Justice and Police of Switzerland, Elisabeth Baum Schneider, met today Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Dimitris Kairides before the presentation of a program for which the Swiss government, the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum and the NGO Solidarity Now will cooperate.

Mr. Kairides, after thanking the Swiss minister for the support provided to Greece by the Swiss government in dealing with immigration through a special financial program of 40 million Swiss francs, informed her in detail about the latest developments in this matter, with given the recent crisis in the Middle East.

This program is part of Switzerland’s wider cooperation with the European Union. The first two actions of the program concern a) the financing of emergency accommodation structures for unaccompanied minors as well as the continuation of the operation of 240 accommodation places inland, and b) the financing until 2026 of the refugee integration center (AthensSolidarityCenter) operated by SolidarityNow in the old Guardhouse , which belongs to the Municipality of Athens, opposite Larissa Station.

For her part, Mrs. Bohm Schneider congratulated the minister for the way in which Greece manages the immigration problem, underlining that in recent years, the image of the country has changed, in the eyes of Swiss society, to the very more positive about this issue.

The meeting was attended by the Deputy Minister of Migration and Asylum, Sofia Voultepsi, the Ambassador of Switzerland to Greece, Stefan Emmerman, as well as the Secretary General of Migration Policy, Patroklos Georgiadis.