The migration minister had nothing but praise for the decision in Brussels. Dimitris Kairidis announced on Wednesday evening that it was “a breakthrough”. “A historic day” that shows that “European peoples can achieve more together.” Kairidis belongs to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing conservative New Democracy party, which governs Greece with an absolute majority. The party owes its election victories not only to the desire of many Greeks for stability, but also to the issue for which Dimitris Kairidis is responsible: the fight against irregular immigration.
Prime Minister Mitsotakis promised from the start that tougher action would be taken at the borders, especially on the border with Turkey – in the Aegean Sea and on the border river Evros in the north of the country. Mitsotakis not only had the support of his voters, who felt left alone by the other EU countries with the large number of arrivals. In Brussels and other European capitals, people were also happy that Mitsotakis managed to reduce the number of arrivals, albeit sometimes using means beyond legality. The Greek government was proven to have committed pushbacks, i.e. the illegal deportation of refugees immediately after their arrival – without them having the chance to apply for asylum.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis scored points with voters with his promise to take tougher action against illegal migration.
(Photo: Louiza Vradi/REUTERS)
On the Aegean islands opposite the Turkish mainland, such as Kos and Samos, several reception centers financed with EU funds were built. Funds in the hundreds of millions flowed into the construction. The centers are not just visually reminiscent of prisons. The Greek Council for Refugees criticizes the fact that people are not allowed to leave the camps while they wait for their asylum seeker cards. Doctors Without Borders speak of “prison-like” conditions, also because of the video surveillance inside. How Greece deals with refugees is a constant concern of European courts; Athens was recently convicted in two trials in January.
And yet Greek policy is groundbreaking for what Europe is now implementing as a whole. The EU-Turkey deal from 2016 already stipulated that people were not allowed to leave the island they had reached from Turkey during their trial. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who came into office in 2019, followed up on this: asylum procedures at the place of arrival as quickly as possible, accelerated by the fact that the prime minister had Turkey declared a safe country of origin for Syrians and Afghans. The Turkish government, however, refused to take the people back. They were then stuck – in a legal no man’s land.
However, the Greek truth so far has also been that the republic is only a transit country. For most people, after months or years of waiting, they find a legal or illegal route to where they actually want to go: Northern Europe. The current European compromise wants to change that; governments should be allowed to buy their way out if they no longer want to take in refugees – a kind of fee to the countries at the EU’s external borders, which have no choice. Kostas Arvanitis, MEP for left-wing Syriza, voted against the compromise on Wednesday. “This,” he said, “will turn our country into a prison.”