As of: 07/28/2022 6:29 p.m
The EU border protection agency Frontex is accused of ignoring the pushing back of refugees at sea by the Greek coast guard. During her visit to Athens, Foreign Minister Baerbock said that this was “incompatible with EU law”.
In Greece, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock criticized the illegal rejection of refugees at the EU’s external borders and called for systematic investigations. “If we look the other way, then our values will perish in the Mediterranean,” she said after visiting a refugee camp near Athens and the Frontex border protection agency at the port of Piraeus.
European values should also apply at the EU’s external border. “It’s often about the weakest: it’s about men and women who have been on the run for years, it’s about small children,” emphasized Baerbock.
“A major topic for Annalena Baerbock is migration and flight”, Frank Jahn, ARD Berlin, currently Athens, on Foreign Minister Baerbock’s visit to Greece and Turkey
tagesschau24 2 p.m., 28.7.2022
Baerbock: “Respect human rights around the clock”
Aid organizations have been criticizing for years that Greek border guards are systematically pushing migrants back to Turkey so that they do not apply for asylum in Greece. There are also repeated media reports on such so-called pushbacks, in which Frontex is also accused of involvement.
A secret EU report accuses the EU border protection agency Frontex of deliberately turning a blind eye when refugees are pushed back at sea by the Greek coast guard. On 129 pages, the report documents “how the EU border protection agency Frontex was involved in the illegal machinations of the Greek coast guard,” writes the “Spiegel”. The border guards are therefore in the Aegean “systematically powerless asylum seekers from the sea”.
Baerbock went on to say that the EU “must be able to ensure even more effectively that human rights are respected around the clock, of course, also at the European external borders”. Pushing refugees back across the EU’s external borders is “incompatible with European law,” she clarified.
Joint sea rescue
The Foreign Minister also called for more support for Greece in securing the EU’s external border and for a joint European sea rescue service to save refugees from drowning trying to get to Europe via the Mediterranean. Aid organizations are currently taking on this task. But she demanded: “In the medium term, this task must become a state task again.”
According to the refugee agency UNHCR, since the beginning of the year around 6,250 people have been able to cross the border in north-east Greece or cross by boat from the west coast of Turkey to the Greek islands. There were always boat accidents and deaths. Athens and Ankara blame each other for this state of affairs.
Commemorating victims of World War II
At the start of her visit to Greece, Baerbock commemorated the victims of the German occupation during World War II. The Greens politician visited the former prison of the Nazi headquarters, where thousands of resistance fighters and civilians were imprisoned and tortured between 1941 and 1944. She then laid flowers at the Athens Holocaust Memorial.
The Foreign Minister then stressed that a “line” should never be drawn under the Nazi past. But she also reiterated the German rejection of Greek reparation claims. Greece, like Poland, continues to assert claims for compensation and calls for negotiations on this. Germany, on the other hand, considers the issue to be closed and is referring to the Two Plus Four Agreement on the foreign policy consequences of German reunification from 1990.
Trip to Turkey
On Friday, Baerbock will hold her talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in Athens. She then travels to Turkey. The double visit to the two NATO partners is important to her, especially in these difficult times when Russia is trying to split the Western alliance, said the Green politician in an interview with the newspaper “Ta Nea”.
Relations between NATO members Greece and Turkey had recently deteriorated massively again. Ankara is challenging the sovereignty of Greek islands in the eastern Aegean, such as Rhodes, Samos and Kos, and is calling for the Greek military to withdraw. Turkey is emphasizing the demands with overflights of Turkish fighter jets over inhabited Greek islands.