Keys to 44 newly-built Regional Housing Programme (RHP) apartments have been delivered to refugee families in Subotica, Serbia. To date, more than 6,800 RHP homes have been allocated to beneficiaries across Serbia, one of the RHP’s four partner countries.

In addition to the beneficiaries themselves, attendees at the ceremony for delivery of the keys included Nataša Stanisavljević, Commissioner for Refugees and Migration of the Republic of Serbia; Stevan Bakić, Mayor of Subotica; Emanuele Giaufret, Ambassador and Head of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Serbia;  Christian Ebner, Austrian Ambassador to Serbia; Daniel Mohseni, Second Secretary at the German Embassy in Serbia; Ivana Jelić, Assistant Durable Solutions Officer, at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Serbia, and Dušan Kovačević, Head of the Public Sector Projects Implementation Unit Ltd.

On behalf of the European Union – the main donor to the RHP – Emanuele Giaufret congratulated the families on their new homes and reflected on the role of the EU and its partners in providing housing facilities for numerous refugee families. “It is a great pleasure to hand over keys to 44 families who will thus start a new life,” he said. These families suffered a lot during the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia, and now they are finally facing the future and a better life.”