Refugees: 1999-2000 action programme to promote their integration in the Union

PURPOSE : Proposal for a Council Decision establishing a Community action programme to promote the integration of refugees over the 1999-2000 period. CONTENT : This proposed programme in in response to the wishes of the European Parliament to establish a legal base for actions in favour of the integration of refugees that are currently under way. It seeks to promote the integration of refugees in the Community and is based on the need for action at European level, following the growing awareness, in the population, of the crucial challenges for democratic societies posed by xenophobia, the lack of integration and social exclusion. The programme is designed in such a way as to support and complement measures taken by and in the Member States, while respecting their responsibilities and their cultural diversity. With a view to making best use of the results of previous actions, to maintaining the added value of these measures at European level and to ensuring a transition towards the inclusion of measures in favour of refugees in future initiatives undertaken by the Community, the action programme will contribute to : - the development of multi-dimensional and innovative integration measures; - the creation, as well as the development, of trans-national co-operation in the subject; - the information, the co-ordination, the evaluation and the exchange of best practices and experiences at European Union level; - the stimulation of experiments and the identification of good models of innovative actions in terms of content and organisation; - the analysis of the situation of refugees in the Member States.�