The Greek diaspora in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

lowing areas: Ipiros, Central, West and East Macedonia,
and Thrace.
Foreign programmes
1) The European Community Fund announced three programmes
for Confronting Market Exclusion for 1995.
One of them was entitled the Integration of refugees,
immigrants and emigrating Greeks and was funded
with 7,9 billion drs. The programme was to be proportionately
implemented in every Greek county so as to
serve a multiple purpose: education and the learning of
the Greek language, vocational training and rehabilitation,
subsidised work and/or the setting up of new
enterprises.
2) In 1992 the European Union enacted the INTEREG programme
in which the Greeks returning home (from any
country of origin) were included. This programme of
vocational training, funded by INTEREG, was founded
by OAED at the end of 1992 and the beginning of 1993.
The programme was implemented in those counties
that constitute the external borders of the European Union,
that is East, West and Central Macedonia, Thrace,
Ipiros, the Ionian Islands, the North and South Aegean,
and Crete. It included 1,600 persons and the sum spent
was 1.25 billion drs.
3) From 1991–1995, the European Union founded the HO-
RIZON programme whose purpose was to facilitate the
social and economic integration of the Greeks returning
to Greece, independently of the country in which they
had lived. Several public services and private enterprises
applied for finance from HORIZON to implement
parts of their programmes. EIYAPOE and OAED
(Organisation for the Recruitment of Workforce) are the
two most important organisations that participated in
this programme. EIYAPOE received responsibility for
the teaching of the Greek language, but only for the
Pontians. OAED, on the other hand, took three steps as
part of the HORIZON programme. Specifically:
a) the first step was the vocational training of 2,697
people which took place in four districts: East, Central,
West Macedonia, and Thrace. 1.4 billion drs.
were spent.
b) The second step was to subsidise enterprises hiring
Greek emigrants for a 12 month period in the
same districts as mentioned above. The purpose of
this measure was to reduce unemployment; 2,257
people were hired and 1.56 billion drs. spent. Unfortunately,
at some point (usually after 5 months) some
employers fired the subsidised persons, for unknown
reasons, a fact that created two problems: firstly, that
Greece could not absorb the sum that it was eligible
to from the European Union and, secondly, that the
problem of unemployment continued to exist.
c) The third step was to train nine OAED employees
to qualify them for the implementation of certain
programmes for the emigrants. The sum spent was
37 million drs.
4) From 1996 to 1999, INTEGRA took over from HORIZON
and formed a unified programme called HORIZON IN-
TEGRA (to demonstrate the continuity of the former
programme). INTEGRA dealt with ex-prisoners, drug
addicts, one-parent families, immigrants, emigrants,
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