EU to give €5.7m to Finland for Asylum, Migration, Integration

The implementation programme of the Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund (AMIF) will receive an additional resettlement appropriation of EUR 5.7 million, which the European Commission will pay to Finland, said the Ministry of the Interior in a press release on Thursday.

An amendment to the fund’s implementation programme is needed to include the resettlement appropriation in the programme and to reallocate funding between the fund’s specific and national objectives. The amendment to the implementation programme was adopted at the government plenary session on Thursday.

The funding will be allocated to measures related to the reception and integration of quota refugees who arrived in Finland in 2020.

In the previous monitoring period of October 2019 to October 2020, 572 quota refugees arrived in Finland. In addition, the core funding of AMIF will be reallocated between the objectives of the fund in order to make full use of the funding in the call for proposals that starts on 3 May.

AMIF’s calls for proposals starting on 3 May 2021 will include the resettlement appropriation that is to be added to the implementation programme.

In addition, approximately EUR 1 million of unspent funds that were already previously included in the programme will be open for application. This means the resettlement appropriation that is open for application will amount to around EUR 6.7 million.

Funding will be allocated especially to the national objective of integration and, as part of this, a thematic call for proposals that concern how to promote receptiveness in society will be launched in May. Regarding the thematic call, one of the purposes of the projects to be supported is to make the role of society visible in the integration of third-country nationals into Finnish society and to identify factors affecting it.