Immigration Minister Notis Mitarachi (Notis Mitarachi) said on Tuesday that Greece does not want to be the entry point for Afghans fleeing the escalating conflict in their homeland to join the European Union, calling on the European Union to jointly respond to the crisis.
In 2015, there was an immigration crisis in Europe. At that time, nearly 1 million people fled the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and landed on its islands. As one of the European countries that receive the most immigrants, the government officials in Athens are anxious that developments in Afghanistan may trigger that. A repeat of the crisis.
“We made it clear that we will not and cannot be a European gateway for refugees and immigrants who may try to come to the EU,” Mitarachi told national television station ERT.
“We can’t let millions of people leave Afghanistan and come to the European Union…Of course we can’t pass through Greece,” he said.
The EU foreign ministers will convene a crisis meeting on Tuesday to discuss Afghanistan’s degeneration into the Taliban. Greece has requested that this issue be discussed at the EU’s meeting of interior ministers on Wednesday.
“The solution must be universal, and it must be a European solution,” Mitarachi said. Last week, the solidarity among EU member states on whether to expel failed Afghan asylum seekers broke.
Since 2015, attempts by EU legislators to comprehensively reform EU immigration and asylum rules have been repeatedly blocked and postponed. The new immigration and asylum agreement proposed by the European Commission in September last year aims to speed up the processing of the EU’s external borders and adopt voluntary measures rather than imposing immigration quotas on member states. However, governments have not yet reached agreement on these proposals.
