First meeting for the Council for the Integration of Migrants and Refugees of the City of Athens with a new composition
The reactivation of the Council for the Integration of Migrants and Refugees under the new Deputy Mayor paves the way for the voices of communities to be heard more loudly.
The first meeting of the Council for the Integration of Migrants and Refugees (SEMP) with this composition, after the change of the Municipal Authority, was held on March 12, 2024 at the City Hall with a large participation from the communities.
The new president of SEMP is the Deputy Mayor for Social Integration of Migrants and Refugees, Mr. Thanasis Cheimonas.
“We constructed a representative body both at the level of the elected persons, where there is representation of a wide scale of the democratic spectrum, and at the level of communities in its composition”, Mr. Cheimonas emphasized.
He went on to point out that the observer organizations and communities are equal speakers, whose proposals will be the subject of discussion. “Therefore, I invite”, he added, “not only the official members, but also the invited bodies, especially from the communities, to contribute by bringing issues to the agenda and make use of the space of SEMP as an institutional collective consultation process that has the potential to highlight issues and propose measures”.
The 5 new regular members of the SEMP of the City of Athens are the following: Greek Forum of Migrants, Greek Forum of Refugees, Federation of Albanian Associations in Greece, United African Women Organization of Greece, Community of Afghan Migrants and Refugees in Greece.