CEB supports refugee integration, education infrastructure in Nuremberg

The Governor of the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB), Rolf Wenzel, signed a €80 million loan agreement with the City of Nuremberg in Germany to support the city’s investments in education infrastructure. He also signed a €600,000 grant to not-for-profit municipal employment agency Noris-Arbeit to support the access of migrants and refugees to training and education.

Nuremberg, Bavaria’s second largest city, has experienced a significant population increase in recent years, due to domestic and EU immigration as well as the arrival of a large number of non-EU refugees, a third of whom were minors when they arrived. As the city’s population is expected to continue to grow steadily, mounting demographic pressure has necessitated additional investments in education infrastructure.

The CEB loan will contribute to Nuremberg’s education investment programme by financing the construction and renovation of 50 different school sites, including early childhood care facilities. The funds will also be used for IT investments in education, supporting among other things a digitalisation programme for schools. The CEB-financed project will increase capacity for nursery school, daycare and after-school programmes, enhance the quality of existing school facilities, and create more places in schools to meet increased demand.

The grant to Noris-Arbeit is specifically aimed at facilitating the social integration of migrants and refugees and also of long-term unemployed persons with basic education needs. The project aims at providing training courses, including language and skills training, in order to improve the participants’ access to education and the labor market and ease their integration into community life.

The funds for the grant are provided from the Migrant and Refugee Fund (MRF), a grant-based facility established by the CEB in 2015 to help its member states tackle the inflow of migrants and refugees. Since its establishment, the MRF has allocated over € 26 million to migrant and refugee projects in CEB member countries.

Original source: CEB
Published on 19 December 2018