Europe

Home page

Europe

Brussels recommends sending asylum-seekers back to Greece from March

08 December 2016 13:29 (UTC +04:00)

The European Union's executive said on Thursday that member states should be allowed to send some asylum-seekers back to Greece from mid-March, in a step Brussels hopes will help restore the bloc's migration policies, which collapsed under a mass influx last year, Reuters reports.

Under EU rules, the first country of entry is responsible for handling an asylum claim, but that system broke down last year in Greece, the main gateway to Europe for more than a million refugees and migrants.

Unable to cope, Greece let many of them pass through on their own to Germany and other wealthy EU states in defiance of the bloc's rules. That led countries along the route gradually to close their borders, stranding many in Greece, which struggled to offer them proper shelter.

The bloc's asylum policy and its zone of internal free travel both collapsed last year as an uncontrolled flow of migrants and refugees triggered bitter disputes between EU states on how to handle them.

These disputes remain unresolved and more than 62,000 people are still in Greece, even though an EU agreement with Turkey in March reduced the arrivals to a trickle. 1,187 people have been deported from Greece to Turkey since March 2016.

Brussels put additional conditions on returning people beyond March, saying Greece should give individual assurances of fair treatment for any returnees and that unaccompanied children not be sent back at all.