AGYIA, Crete (Reuters) -Greek lawmakers were set to vote on legislation on Thursday that would temporarily halt the processing of asylum applications of people coming from North Africa for at least three months, a move rights groups have called illegal.
The vote comes amid a surge in migrant arrivals to the island of Crete and after talks with divided Libya’s Benghazi-based eastern government to help stem the flow were cancelled acrimoniously this week.
If passed, the law would represent a further hardening of Greece’s stance towards migrants on Europe’s southern fringe.
“From now on, the road for illegal migrants is go to jail or go back to their country,” Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told parliament before the vote. “This is not a just normal migrant flow, it is an invasion into Europe.”
A vote on the law, which would also allow authorities to quickly deport migrants without any prior identification process, was expected on Thursday or Friday. It is expected to pass, given the ruling party’s parliamentary majority.
Greece, one of the main gateways into the European Union for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, has taken an increasingly tough stand on migration since Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre-right New Democracy came to power in 2019, building a fence at its northern land borders and boosting sea patrols in the east.
Still, sea arrivals of migrants travelling from northeastern Libya to its southern islands of Crete and Gavdos, the closest European territory to North Africa, have surged this year.
SEA RESCUES
Dozens, including children, sat on mattresses in a temporary reception centre in Agyia, near the city of Chania, on Thursday. There were among hundreds rescued by the Greek coastguard in the Libyan Sea off Crete in recent days.
“We are experiencing what I would call the worst crisis of the past two years,” said Vasilis Katsikandarakis, head of the coastguard staff in western Crete. “All the burden has fallen onto the coastguard, who don’t have the necessary equipment and personnel to deal with such flows.”
Human rights groups said the proposed three-month asylum ban would violate international and European law, and called on the Greek government to recall it.
“Seeking refuge is a human right; preventing people from doing so is both illegal and inhumane,” the International Rescue Committee said in a statement.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis denied that the law change was illegal and said it was meant to deter migrants.
Mitsotakis met European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Malta’s Prime Minister Robert Abela on Thursday to discuss the issue on the sidelines of a conference in Rome.
They agreed to work on resending an EU delegation to Libya to revive a visit which was aborted when the parallel government of Osama Hamad, which controls the east and large areas of the south, denied them entry.
(Reporting by Nicolas Economou and Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Alex Richardson)
