In the shadow of the CoV pandemic, the refugee issue continues to make headlines in Greece. It became known that around half of those refugees who have applied for asylum in Greece are currently not aware of their whereabouts.
“We don’t know exactly where there are thousands of asylum seekers whose application procedures have not yet been completed,” admitted Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarakis at the end of last week.
At a press conference on the asylum and migration strategy, Mitarakis put the number of pending asylum applications at 84,000. The issuing of electronically readable identity papers for those affected will be finished by January 15th, when one will have “a much clearer picture of who of them is actually in Greece”.
He added that so far 32,574 people have received negative decisions on their asylum applications. For many, however, nothing is known about their current fate or their whereabouts.
Turkey has not taken back refugees since March
Mitarakis did not want to rule out that many of them live illegally in Greece or have traveled illegally to other EU countries. The background to this is the fact that Turkey has not taken back rejected asylum seekers since March 10, as was contractually regulated between Ankara and the EU. The Turkish side is citing the CoV pandemic as the reason for the negative stance, the minister said.
The politician of the conservative ruling party Nea Dimokratia (ND) also said: „If we as Europe fail at our external borders, then we also fail at the internal borders.“ Of course, Greece does not want those affected to travel illegally, but in practice that is often the case.
Nobody knows how many people are illegally traveling to other EU countries every month. For this reason, one must support the possibilities of legal entry, which must be done according to specific rules. Under no circumstances should this process be left to smugglers.
