The Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, once again defended his government’s management of the country’s external borders and rejected allegations of regular pushbacks and violence against migrants by the Greek coast guard, on Monday 27 June in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE).
Invited by the LIBE Committee to speak, after the latter had expressed its concern to Commissioner Ylva Johansson in a letter revealed by Politico, the minister also said that Turkey was responsible for numerous provocations and attempts at destabilisation with “encouragement” of departures to Greece.
“We wouldn’t be having these discussions if Turkey was implementing its part of the agreement”, the minister said, referring to the 2016 EU-Turkey arrangement under which Ankara must prevent irregular migrant arrivals in exchange for money.
The minister also defended the improvement of reception centres over the past 3 years; “no one has died from Covid-19 in the refugee camps”, he said. Asylum processing has been sped up and the coastguard has also done its job by rescuing many migrants this year, including several dozen people recently from the Evros River “where they had been abandoned by their smugglers”.
He also attacked the work of investigative journalists who had provided evidence of pushback in their articles. The minister said that “14 suspected cases are rumours” that are not substantiated, telling MEPs that a new independent audit investigation will be carried out.
The minister also explained some of the difficulties as a result of ongoing technical discussions with Turkey to determine responsibility in the Evros River area.
Some migrants have recently been stranded for several days while both sides have been saying the other is responsible for their care.
Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany) said that the fact that third countries such as Turkey were behaving badly “cannot be an excuse” for member countries to behave badly in turn and “use violence”. The MEP also recalled that many migrants are forced to cross borders irregularly when fleeing an emergency situation.
“The pressure on Greece is enormous, we must not only react, but be proactive in dealing with migration”, the minister said, denying any illegal treatment of migrants.
He also felt that the discussion on external borders would be more “honest” if the Member States also took their share of the burden.
Indeed, while the latter were still struggling in recent days to obtain voluntary commitments to relocate 10,000 people a year, the southern EU countries have recently made it clear that it would rather be necessary to “share out 120,000 people a year”, said Mr Mitarachi. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)