Unwelcoming shores

Source: http://www.independentworldreport.com.

21 NOV 09

Simone Troller of Human Rights Watch describes the plight of migrant and refugee children in Greece and how Greek authorities are doing the dirty work for other members of the European Union – giving them the opportunity to get rid of migrants, including potential refugees.

“We were one group of twelve persons they took out from the detention centre. They drove us in a car, for maybe one and a half hours. We arrived in the forest around 9 PM. They kept us there until midnight, they told us not to move, otherwise the Turkish police would find us. It was next to a small river. This side was Greece, the other side was Turkey… The boat was a metal boat, a long metal boat. Inside the boat there was one policeman. He started the engine and after we arrived to the other side he told us to get out quickly and the boat went straight back. When the Turkish police arrived two of us explained what happened. We were, for twelve days, in Turkish detention. They beat me too much… When the Turkish police beat me they said I should call my family to send me money to return to Afghanistan. I asked them not to send me back to Afghanistan, because I had problems. I asked them to keep me. But they did not care.”

This was how a seventeen-year-old Afghan boy described his secret expulsion from Greece to Turkey and ultimately back to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, his experience is typical of the fate of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who have been expelled from the European Union at the hands of Greek authorities. As a result, many people who need protection are sent back to danger, abuse or inhuman detention conditions.

In 2008 and 2009, Human Rights Watch investigated the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, in Greece and published its findings in three reports. In late 2008, when we first presented our findings to the Greek government about systematic illegal expulsions of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees to Turkey, we were given the cold shoulder – they ignored our findings.

When we presented them to EU policymakers in Brussels and also described the total absence of protection for migrant children who arrive without a parent or caregiver, there was recognisable disbelief and even shock in people’s faces. When I summarised in a meeting with a policymaker in Brussels that an unaccompanied migrant child who enters Greece is either detained or left to survive on the streets, I was told: “I don’t believe this.”

It may be hard to believe that such callous and illegal acts are taking place in the heart of Europe that has long committed itself to respect basic human rights standards. It may also be hard to believe that Greece offers no safety net for unaccompanied children. Those who are not expelled are either detained in filthy and overcrowded conditions or released onto the streets where they face a miserable struggle for survival and exploitation, including as child labourers.

Yet, ignoring the reality on the ground means such acts will continue to take place. Greece’s treatment of migrants and refugees, including these children, violates binding European Union directives for asylum seekers.

Despite the shocked reactions in Brussels when we described what we had found, our call to the European Commission to take Greece to the European Court of Justice for these violations has so far gone unheeded.

We also expected a stronger signal from other EU member states. In late 2008, in a meeting with EU member state delegations, we urged them to stop sending migrants and asylum seekers back to Greece under the so-called Dublin II regulations, because of the ill-treatment, detention and unfair asylum procedures. They told us, in the words of one diplomat: “If we stop doing that, more migrants will arrive to our country.”

There is no doubt that Greece is on the frontline of migration to Europe and that it carries a heavy burden for the rest of the EU under the Dublin II rules. But that reflects a wider failure of Europe’s asylum and migration policy that puts pressure on countries at its borders instead of ensuring equitable burden-sharing across the continent.

Under Dublin II regulations, the country where a person first enters the EU is generally held responsible for examining that person’s asylum claim, though for unaccompanied children the rule applies only if the child has made a claim there. The regulations are premised on the notion that all EU member states have comparable asylum and migration practices. Yet, there are wide disparities, with countries like Greece effectively offering no protection at all.

Greece gives refugee status to 0.05% of asylum seekers after a first interview and recently abolished meaningful appeals. This prompted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to withdraw from a formal role in Greece’s asylum procedure. Yet, EU member states continue to return migrants, asylum seekers, and even unaccompanied children to Greece, simply pretending that everything is perfectly fine.

It is hard not to get the impression that these EU member states are perfectly happy with Greece doing the dirty work for them – giving them the opportunity to get rid of these migrants, including potential refugees among them. In mid-2009, six months after we brought our findings to both Greek and EU attention, the Greek government began a new crackdown against migrants – arresting hundreds across the country, bulldozing a make-shift camp in Patras, evicting them from run-down dwellings in Athens, and detaining new arrivals on its islands.

Human Rights Watch returned to Greece in September 2009 and collected evidence that Greek authorities have arrested persons all over the country, and summarily expelled some of them across the river to Turkey, though previously it only sent those who had just entered from Turkey back that way. This means that no part of Greece is now safe for anyone in need of protection.

While the EU has largely remained silent on Greece’s abusive record or has focused on blaming Turkey for refusing to take migrants back, there are some encouraging signs from the newly elected Greek government. It announced in mid-October that Greece would no longer be a hell pit for migrants. The government also pledged to release 1,200 migrants from detention, where most are held in inhuman conditions, and to create a special police unit to investigate allegations of abuse.

Fixing the system will be a tall order, though. The new government inherits an asylum system that no longer deserves that name, a police force that commits abuses against migrants both in broad daylight and in secret nighttime operations, and detention facilities that are a hazard for detainees and staff alike. Fixing this will require more than promises and symbolic acts.

Despite the overwhelming agenda, there are obvious priorities. The Greek government can protect the most vulnerable migrants, especially unaccompanied children, and get rid of the stark alternatives in the current system of either detaining them or abandoning them to the streets and to exploitation. Greece should give them decent shelter, food, clothing, health care, and, of course, protection from traffickers.

Not all of the more urgent reforms even require more resources. An unambiguous commitment to stop the illegal expulsion of migrants to Turkey is essentially a matter of political will to operate according to the rule of law. The new police unit should immediately investigate these secret expulsions and levy sanctions against those responsible. Accountability for these acts is paramount for meaningful police reform.

Greece also needs to come to terms with the reality that many undocumented foreigners, adults and children alike, left their countries because their lives were in danger and have a legitimate claim for protection. The government needs to put its broken asylum system back on track, take the asylum procedure away from the police, create a special body that assesses claims fairly and promptly and institute a fair, workable appeals process. Otherwise, the adults and children the Greek government releases from detention now will end up again in a dead-end situation: unable to leave Greece, unable to return to their countries, and unable to be recognised as refugees.

Halting human rights abuses that have gone unchecked for too long should be urgent priorities both for Athens and for Brussels. The European Commission should make clear to Athens that unless the new government takes steps to bring its laws and practice in line with EU and human rights standards, the commission will refer the matter to the European Court of Justice. In addition, the EU needs to ensure that EU member states are held to account when they fail to respect their obligations under EU law, and ultimately to reform the Dublin system. Only then can the EU take meaningful steps toward creating a common European asylum system that offers equal level of protection across the continent and supports the countries on the frontline.♦

Simone Troller is Researcher, Human Rights Watch. For more on migrant and refugee children in Greece, see: Greece: Unsafe and unwelcoming shores and Left to survive: Systematic failure to protect unaccompanied migrant children in Greece, available at http://www.hrw.org

Greek asylum procedures are violating EU law, say organisations from across Europe

SOURCE: http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk

13 November 2009

Refugee groups from across the EU, including the Refugee Council, have today filed a complaint with the European Commission stating that the Greek asylum system is failing and, as it currently stands, violates EU legislation on the treatment of asylum seekers.

The complaint states that asylum seekers in Greece are detained in overcrowded, dirty prisons or forced to live on the streets where many of them face harassment and violence. Asylum application can only be made on Saturdays at the police station in Athens. Every week thousands of asylum seekers queue up outside the station, yet only a small number are able to make a claim. There is a severe lack of information available about the asylum process, no interpreters and little access to legal aid. A serious shortage of accommodation means men, women and children are being left street homeless. And there is a serious risk that many refugees will end up being sent back either over the border to Turkey or to their home country to face the persecution from which they were fleeing, violating the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Because of its geographical position, Greece receives a high number of asylum seekers. Each year tens of thousands of asylum seekers arrive in Greece. On top of this, the UK returns refugees who arrive in the UK to Greece without considering their asylum application if it can be shown that they have passed through the country.

Jonathan Ellis, Director of Policy and Development said:

“The situation is untenable. We can no longer stand by while the Greek authorities continue to violate EU law and treat asylum seekers in this way. Until the asylum process is accessible and fair we should halt all returns to Greece immediately. It is unacceptable that anyone should be sent back to Greece while we have such serious concerns for their safety and how they might be treated.

“This is yet another example of why we need a pan-European approach towards those who seek refuge in Europe. European countries need to work together to ensure that each country does its fair share to relieve the pressure on countries close to the borders and ensure that all asylum seekers to the EU are treated fairly and humanely.”

Stop another 5 year program of death and detention!30 Nov – 1 Dec 2009, Brussels – Transnational Protests against Justice and Home Affairs Meeting

SOURCE: NO RACISM NET

Stop another 5 year program of death and detention!

30th of November and 1st of December 2009 in Brussels – Transnational Protests in front of the EU – Justice and Home Affairs – Meeting

Refugee Protection and Migrants Rights instead of a brutal EU-Border-regime! No to the repressive Stockholm program! After Tampere and The Hague, the Stockholm program will constitute the next 5-year-framework for Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) within the EU and its memberstates. The new program claims to build up the ‘area of freedom, justice and security’. But in fact it will continue to implement an even tighter regime of surveillance and control and will promote a securitisation of social life, undermining all civil rights and privacy despite contrary claims.

Frontex, the Movie feat. noborder camp in Lesvos 2009

source: http://lesvos09.antira.info/2009/07/frontex-the-movie-feat-noborder-camp-in-lesvos-2009/

Rift Between the North and the South

SOURCE: NOBORDERS BRIGHTON

The rift between the northern and southern EU states is set to grow larger as yesterday’s meeting of EU Interior Ministers in Stockholm postponedany re-examination of the Dublin II Regulation till 2014. The Dublin II Regulation, which stipulates that migrants must apply for asylum in the first EU member state they enter, has resulted in what southern EU states claim is disproportionate pressure on the immigrant reception services in Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta.

Roberto Maroni, Italy’s interior minister and member of the right wing Lega Nord, demanded that the issue of ‘burden-sharing’ should be one of the top priorities in the EU’s new five-year plan on justice issues. As a result, the EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot agreed to make the European Refugee Fund applicable to all incoming migrants, not just those successfully claiming asylum and that several million euros in aid will be given to the Mediterranean states to spend on additional reception centres, food and social support for migrants.

This comes against the backdrop of a number of other recent developments. On Wednesday, the Greek and Italian Prime Ministers met and agreed on a common front to push for EU policy to curbing the numbers of illegal migrants, negotiating repatriation pacts between Brussels and the migrants’ states of origin and transit countries and increasing the role of the EU’s border monitoring agency Frontex.

Wednesday also saw the deportation of 90 migrants by air to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the latest in a growing number of flights from Athens as Greece seeks to remove the 99% plus of migrants whose asylum claims the Greek state routinely turns down.

Earlier in the week the UNHCR criticised both countries for their immigration policies. Greece was criticised for the decision to destroy the Patras migrant camp and deport some of the migrants before their asylum claims had been examined. It also appealed to Greece to avoid so-called “push-backs” of migrants originating from war zones (Greece regularly buses migrants back to Turkey without any due process).

Athens has recently accused Ankara of failing to stop clandestine immigration through Turkish territory, which the Greeks, and now even the EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot, say has pushed their resources to the limit and is destabilising “Greek democracy” (a reference to the recent election of extreme right wing LAOS MEPs). Interestingly, new figures from the Greek coastguard show a pronounced drop in migrant interceptions over the past few months.

Greece officials have also been examining disused army barracks to open as temporary reception centres for the thousands of migrants awaiting the processing of their asylum applications. One likely choice is a disused military site on the island of Evia.

Italy has also been the recipient of forceful criticism from the UNHCR about its use of force when intercepting 82 mainly Eritrean migrants on July 1st 30 miles off the Lampedusa coast, who were then returned to Libya under Italy’s own ‘push-back’ immigration policy. A ‘’significant number” of people on board the boat, including nine women and six children, were returned illegally as they had legitimate claims to asylum status, the agency claimed.

In an astonishing fit of pique, Italy’s EU Affairs Minister, Andrea Ronchi, rebuffed the criticism, saying the UNHCR ‘’should be ashamed of itself” and should ”apologise to Italy” over the allegations. ”These are hasty, false, demagogic, offensive and repugnant accusations that offend our armed forces, who every day demonstrate their morality, their dedication, humanity, competence and sacrifice”.

“Excuse me, Mr. Minister – she said – what difference is there between dying at sea and dying in Libya?”

source: fortresseurope.blogspot

The massacre continues: 459 deaths in the first 6 months of 2009

ROME, 2 July 2009 – The number of deaths at the border fell for the first time over the last three years. In the first semester of 2009, the victims reported by the international press along the routes of emigration in the Mediterranean have been 434, to which the 25 people who disappeared along land borders must be added, including the three boys who ended up under lorries in the Italian Adriatic harbours. Last year, over the same period, there had been 985 documented deaths. The figures –based on news from the international press- were divulged by the Fortress Europe observatory. The main reason for the decrease in shipwrecks is the objective decrease in the number of arrivals, particularly in Italy and Spain. Since the start of returns to Libya on 7 May, arrivals by boat in Sicily can be counted on one hand. And in the Canary islands in Spain, there has not been any arrival by boat in the months of April and May, and very few boats arrived in the archipelago in June. This is an effect of the returns in the high seas and joint patrol operations enacted by Frontex in Senegal and Mauritania. However, it is still too early to compare data. In fact, very little news arrives from the press in countries to the south of the Mediterranean on this issue. For this reason, it cannot stated with any certainty whether the deaths have decreased or whether the shipwrecks occur further away from the gaze of our cameras, off the Libyan coast or in the high seas.

In detail, according to the data collected from the international press by Fortress Europe, there were 339 victims along the route towards Malta and Lampedusa in the first semester of 2008 (compared with 650 in the same period of 2008), 87 off the Spanish coast (compared with 136 in 2008) and 8 in the Aegean Sea (compared with 199 in 2008), between Turkey and Greece. There is only news of one victim on the way between Algeria and Sardinia. A corpse that was fished out of the water near to the Cavoli island in the Cagliari region, whose origin may lie in a shipwreck about which there are no available details. Other three emigrants, most probably Afghan refugees, lost their lives under lorries that disembarked in the Italian Adriatic harbours after the crossing from Greece. In Egypt, three refugees were killed after being shot by the Egyptian police at the border with Israel. Two people died in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, as they tried to climb over the six-metre barrier that seals that border. There were also two victims in Calais, in France, where the harbour and Channel Tunnel represent an obligatory passage to enter England illegally. Finally, there were supposedly at least 14 victims of the crossing of the Sahara during the first half of the year, according to the very few pieces of information arriving from Saharan countries.

June has also been a month in which deaths were counted: 29 in the Gibraltar Strait, off the Spanish coasts; 3 in Egypt, shot by the police at the Israeli border; and one in Italy, who was called Amir Rohol, was 19 years old and an Afghan asylum seeker. He died after falling off an articulated lorry that had disembarked in Ancona, along the junction between Clearway 76 and the A14 motorway.

Many are likely to use this data to justify the returns to Libya. Joseph St. John, an official from the Maltese interior ministry also stated this during a seminar in which I took part on 17 June in Malta. Refuse entry to save human lives. From the audience, an Ethiopian woman refugee raised her hand to intervene. “Excuse me, Mr. Minister – she said – what difference is there between dying at sea and dying in Libya?”. I don’t feel that there is much more to add about this.

Spain and Greece pledge to continue anti-immigrant terror in the Mediterranean

source

Spain and Greece to cooperate against illegal immigration

Europe News

Jul 13, 2009, 14:46 GMT

Madrid – Spain and Greece on Monday pledged to jointly renew efforts to fight illegal immigration into the European Union.

Spain will intensify such measures when it takes over the EU presidency in the first half of 2010, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said at a joint press conference with his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis in Madrid.

Spain will focus on strengthening the European frontier control agency Frontex and on seeking repatriation agreements with undocumented immigrants’ countries of origin, Zapatero said.

The agreements should also include cooperation programmes to promote the social and economic development of the countries in question, in order to discourage their citizens from seeking better lives abroad, Zapatero said.

Karamanlis proposed a European coast guard to improve maritime surveillance.

Spain and Greece were among the European countries most concerned by the influx of immigrants across the Mediterranean, Zapatero said.

UNHCR: Greece’s new immigration policies based on “dangerous generalizations”

source

Q&A: Greece’s new immigration policies based on “dangerous generalizations”

10 Jul 2009 15:47:04 GMT

Source: UNHCR

ATHENS, Greece, July 10 (UNHCR) – Greece has introduced strict policies aimed at combating irregular immigration and passed legislation that could compromise the effective protection of people applying for asylum for the first time or on appeal. Charis Karanikas of the Ta Nea daily newspaper recently met Giorgios Tsarbopoulos, head of UNHCR’s office in Athens, to talk about the implications of this new legislation and a police crackdown on alleged illegal immigrants.

Excerpts from the interview:

What do you think of the latest measures?

The reasoning behind them is based on dangerous generalizations. We cannot speak only about “illegal” immigrants. Amongst them are many people who are in need of protection and whom the state is obligated to protect.

Should police measures be beefed up?

Yes, as regards the smugglers and the traffickers. But the problem cannot be handled only by police measures. Harsher policing at the border must be coupled with the creation of reception facilities.

What can be done in neighbourhoods inundated by immigrants?

Firstly, all those who are entitled to it under the law should be referred to special accommodation facilities. They include asylum-seekers and unaccompanied minors. Today, hundreds of people who have a right to this are homeless. In general, there is a need for shelter planning, regardless of whether people are legal or illegal.Will the violence seen in the central Athens neighbourhood of Agios Panteleimon, home to many homeless Afghan migrants and asylum-seekers, spread to other areas?I hope not.

How can this be avoided?

By isolating the extreme reactions, which simply serve to shift the problem. And through a dialogue between the government and the political parties, initiatives taken by the municipalities as well as talks with organizations of immigrants and refugees.

Do you agree with transforming military camps into reception centres?

Reception facilities and administrative detention centres for immigrants in view of their deportation are two separate things. It’s not enough to turn some installations into detention centres if you pretend to create proper reception conditions.

Can Greece address this problem alone?

No.

What’s your opinion about the European Union’s stand on the matter?

It is steering clear of establishing binding mechanisms and practices for fairer responsibility sharing among the member states.

How many immigrants arrive in Greece each year?

In 2008, 146,337 people were arrested for “illegally entering and residing” in the country. There are, of course, others who have not been arrested. On the other hand, an unknown number of those who have been arrested were already residing in the country. Therefore the official data needs further analysis.

How many of them end up in existing reception centres?

All those who enter the country without papers are detained for up to three months at the administrative detention centres. Those who request asylum are transferred to open reception centres, which are too few to meet demand.

What are conditions like at these centres?

Most of the detention centres do not meet the basic conditions of human rights. The exceptions include the new centres on the island of Samos and in the Evros region [Filakio], however both are faced with problems of overcrowding.

What about reception conditions?

Reception facilities in border areas should include services and specialized staff in order to ensure the identification of people who are entitled to protection, assessment of their needs, information about their rights and obligations, and facilitation for their access to the asylum procedure.

Do you think the number of people who apply for asylum is less than the number who need it?

Those who deserve asylum are fewer than those who request it. And those who request it are not all refugees who genuinely deserve it.

Why don’t those who need asylum apply for it?

It’s because they don’t get the right information or legal advice, especially in the border areas. It’s also because they don’t manage to submit their application . . . or because they don’t trust Greece’s very problematic asylum system.

What are the main problems with Greece’s asylum system?

The initial processing and decision-making is unreliable, and the refugee recognition rate is almost zero. Not all asylum claims are registered swiftly, while many asylum-seekers lose their right to appeal. The procedure for adjudicating the claims is extremely slow.

What are the most common complaints you get from immigrants and refugees?

Delays in the adjudication of their asylum applications; lack of shelter and social care; informal push-backs or returns to Turkey across the Evros River [in north-east Greece], cases of ill-treatment.

And what do you do about them?

It depends. We address formal letters to the authorities; we try to solve the problem in an ad hoc way if possible; and we often refer individual cases to non-governmental organizations which provide legal and social support.

The need of oppressive states to share the risk of social unrest – “Immigration Is A Threat To Greek Democracy” says EU Commissioner

The antagonism between states is the game under which the share of the fear or the risk of social unrest due to harsh economic and social conditions becomes itself something to be negotiated between players.   Migration “flows” are a parameter of this risk – certainly not the only one, and not the severest one , since non migrant populations have also many reasons to resist.

Notwithstanding the inter-state antagonism,  though, the best strategy for all states to have their powers unchallenged is to scapegoat someone for the domestic problems, and the best way to do that in the case of Greece is to blur preemptively any social reaction – by immigrants and non-immigrants – in the national threat / political “destabilisation” discourse.   Barrot, thus, mingles the traditional external enemy (Turkey) with the novel internal one (immigrants) for the Greek government and offers a service of disorientation. 

clandestinenglish

Source of the article.

Immigration Is A Threat To Greek Democracy – EU Commissioner

Thursday, 2 July 2009 – 17:09

BRUSSELS (AFP)–A huge flow of migrants through Turkey could threaten social unrest in Greece, European Union Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said Thursday.

“There is a major threat to the equilibrium of the Greek democracy because of the uncontrollable flow of immigration,” Barrot told a press conference in Brussels.

Greece has accused Turkey of failing to stop clandestine immigration through Turkish territory which the Greeks say has pushed their resources to the limit.

Greek Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos Tuesday said the number of migrants detained in Greece tripled to 148,000 in 2008 from 40,000 in 2006.

Europe’s asylum legislation puts pressure on the first E.U. country that receives applicants to handle their claims, but the rules could change in the next six months.

Immigration is causing social tension in Greece and is used as an argument by the extreme right, which saw its share of the vote rise to 7% in recent European parliamentary elections.

Barrot visited Greece this week and called on Turkey to do more to tackle clandestine immigration.

“Turkey has to help us fight the facilitators and the traffickers who push people to make risky journeys,” he said in Brussels.

“We can’t simply remain motionless. We have to get much firmer control from the Turkish government. We would also encourage the Turks to sign a readmission agreement,” the French commissioner said.

He added that he would like to see readmission agreements with Pakistan and other Asian nations, from where some would-be migrants begin their journeys.

Barrot said he intended to relaunch debate on immigration during an informal meeting of E.U. interior and justice ministers in Stockholm July 15-16.

E.U. nations Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta are in the frontline of the battle against migrants without papers and are gearing up for the summer wave of arrivals by sea.

Other E.U. nations refuse to be constrained to accept numbers of asylum seekers to help the four, with some stressing that they have to concentrate on the E.U.’s eastern borders in the former Soviet Union.

Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

The Greek – Turkish diplomatic gaming with refugee lives continues while Jacques Barrot cruises the Agean…

source:

http://www.ekathimerini.com/

Ankara snubs migrant repatriation pact

Asked about Greek calls for the reopening of the Orthodox Seminary on the island of Halki near Istanbul, Bagis said he backed it in principle but linked it to the thorny issue of the Muslim minority in Thrace. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay indicated, in an interview with the Turkish mass-circulation daily Milliyet, that Ankara was leaning toward reopening the seminary. “Both my personal and the general inclination is that the school will be opened,” Gunay was quoted as saying.

While Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu yesterday pledged to work together on bilateral issues in their first meeting on the sidelines of an international summit on Corfu, Turkey’s Minister for European Union Affairs revealed, in an interview published in yesterday’s Kathimerini, that Ankara would not be honoring a bilateral repatriation pact with Greece.

“We refuse to become the world’s biggest refugee camp,” Egemin Bagis said, noting that bilateral pacts such as the one signed by Athens and Ankara should only be honored if similar pacts are agreed between so-called transit countries for would-be migrants, such as Turkey, and countries of origin, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bagis also reiterated Ankara’s opposition to the idea of a special partnership for Turkey with the EU. “We will accept nothing less than full membership. There is no alternative.”

source: http://www.ana-mpa.gr

Visit to Samos migrant centre

European Commission Vice-president Jacques Barrot, responsible for justice, freedom and security, on Monday paid a visit to reception facilities for illegal immigrants on the eastern Aegean island of Samos, accompanied by Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos. In statements afterwards, he acknowledged that Greek authorities faced a difficult task but also stressed Greece’s obligation to provide a refuge for immigrants arriving on its shores.

“I understand the difficulty facing the Greek government, which finds itself having to deal with an ever increasing number of migrants, as well as the obligation for Community solidarity, but also that there is an obligation on the part of the Greek government to offer refuge to the foreigners that come here,” Barrot said.

The Commissioner, upon his arrival on the island, was given a tour of the French vessel belonging to the EU Frontex agency and visited the Migrant Reception Centre on the island, where he talked with immigrants detained there.

In statements to reporters, he said that this was a more general problem that cost human lives and required cooperation with non-EU countries of origin or transit in order to be solved.

Pavlopoulos declared himself satisfied with what he had seen at the Samos centre and what the Commissioner had witnessed regarding Greece’s efforts to tackle a problem that concerned all of Europe.

“It can be understood that Greece is currently receiving the greater number of illegal immigrants. It is making huge efforts to accelerate asylum processes but, as I explained to Mr. Barrot, and as he has himself acknowledged, this does not solve the more general problem that concerns illegal immigrants who are not seeking asylum,” the minister said.

According to Pavlopoulos, coping with the economic migrants required solidarity between EU nations.

“We must carry out the agreement for migration and asylum, which means signing readmission treaties and putting pressure on countries such as Turkey to honour those agreements that exist. The solution, as Mr. Barrot will explain in Athens on Tuesday, is to look at the root of the problem, and this means that we must stamp out all this illegal trafficking of migrants that exploits human lives,” he stressed.