Congress President Gudrun Mosler-Törnström addressed the 2016 Plenary Session of the Conference of European Regional Legislative Assemblies (CALRE), in Varese, on 25 November 2016. She underlined the importance of the cooperation between CALRE and the Congress in the context of the European refugee and migrant crisis and presented the Congress report adopted last October on this topic. “Firstly, local and regional policies promoting migrants’ integration should be seen as a pre-condition for the development of a systemic reception policy. Secondly, our motto must be service provision to the individual human being, regardless of their status as asylum seeker, refugee or migrant, and thirdly, integration must start as early as possible” she stressed. “Regional governments and parliaments have a particularly important role to play here,” she added calling on CALRE members to liaise with the Congress members who sit on their respective parliaments and are therefore natural links between both organisations.       

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