European Central: Greece's New Hard-line Immigration Policies Are A Warning To Both Migrants And The EU
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Across Europe, the calls by politicians to impose uncompromising immigration policies have continued to rise. In recent months, many Europeans have reached a boiling point. Over 150,000 people attended massive anti-immigration marches in London in early September; Germany tightened its border controls in May; Italy is continuing its efforts to build an Albanian fast-track system for processing asylum applications, despite a recent roadblock.
But the Greeks have been in this mindset for years now. On the front lines of Europe's migration crisis since 2015, Greece has been a vocal supporter of cracking down on immigration both legal and illegal. In recent months, Greece temporarily banned processing asylum applications of migrants coming from North Africa, and now the nation has imposed prison terms for those who remain in the country after they are rejected for asylum.
With a history of sparring with the European Council for Human Rights, and the Council of Europe Anti-Torture Committee over immigration, what does these new laws mean for Greece and its neighbors’ border-clamping measures?
A Tired Front-line
Since the mid-2010s, when the instability lingering from the Arab Spring caused many refugees to seek refuge in Europe, Greece has been a focal point. Of the three primary routes migrants used to arrive in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean route, through Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus was the most popular due to its relative safety.
The number of immigrants peaked in 2015 when over 860,000 arrived in Greece, and while that number has since decreased over the past decade, Greece is still a primary entry point to Europe. As a result, public opinion of immigrants has steadily declined, with a 2018 poll showing that 74% of Greeks said immigrants are a burden on their country because they take jobs and social benefits.
When conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came into power in 2019, he began steering Greece toward a harder-line stance on migrants. Over the years, Mitsotakis has installed fence and surveillance systems along Greece’s border with Turkey, has increased its network of migrant detention centers, and upped patrols of its naval territories to deter migrants crossing by sea.
The Many Human Rights Question Marks
These policies, while generally legal under Greek law, have provoked widespread condemnation and dismay from human rights groups. Besides the more general concerns about turning away refugees seeking asylum, there have been a handful of especially high-profile cases.
One such case was the June 2023 Pylos shipwreck, in which over 600 people died when an overcrowded fishing vessel carrying migrants sank off the Greek coast. While the official Greek account wrote off any government interference, migrant accounts — about 100 people on board survived — say the coastguard had caused their boat to sink while trying to tow it, and then proceeded to pressure the migrants to scapegoat a handful of Egyptian migrants.
But Greece has also engaged in more systemic human rights violations. Pushbacks, an illegal practice of forced returns at EU borders, have been a hidden cornerstone of Greece’s immigration policy.
Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, announced in April that it was reviewing 12 cases of potential rights violations including pushbacks by Greece. Earlier, in January, the European Court of Human Rights found human rights violations by Greece and cited a "systematic practice of pushbacks." Some of these cases go all the way back to 2008, and have been a consistent state-sanctioned policy ever since.
Finally, there is the issue of the migrant detention centers, with the most infamous being the Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) on Samos. Both there and at other camps, children have been diagnosed with malnutrition, violence against detainees is widespread, and there is no meaningful access to legal safeguards.
These centers were meant to house asylum seekers while their asylum applications proceeded, but NGOs like Amnesty International have found “restrictions of freedom” amounting to unlawful detention, and shortcomings in the provision of basic services. Both of these concerns were echoed by the Council of Europe Anti-Torture Committee, and concerns persist about the use of “revenge tactics” against those appealing a negative asylum decision.
Greece Continues To Toe The Line
This year, the first major sign of escalation in Greece’s immigration policy was the July suspension of asylum applications for migrants from North Africa for three months. The move came after Greece deployed two frigates near Libyan waters and reinforced its coastguard in order to stem the tide of migrant vessels crossing the Mediterranean.
The suspension also allows authorities to quickly repatriate migrants without any prior identification process, something that rights groups, opposition parties, and even the U.N. say violates human rights.
But the other major sign of escalation is the passing of a law in September that imposes prison time on asylum seekers who remain in the country after their asylum applications are rejected. Undocumented migrants will have only 14 days to leave, and face prison terms between two to five years alongside steep fines and swifter deportations.
These legislative changes would make one think that Greece is facing an unprecedented migrant influx, but data suggests this isn’t the case.
It is true that, according to the DW, around 9,500 arrived on Crete and its neighboring island this year through the end of July, 5. But while this represents a threefold increase from the same period last year, total arrivals to Greece this year number around 31,734, far less than the 62,119 over all of last year. When taking into account that the bulk of arrivals happen over the summer, Greece is not on pace for a significant increase in arrivals this year.
A Bellwether For Europe
So what is happening? Greece’s public opinion on immigration still remains largely negative, with one survey finding 54.9% of Greeks believing immigrants should be deported immediately and 69.3% believing immigrants should remain in holding centers until they are transferred to their country.
This is not an unpopular position across Europe; Last year, 15 EU states demand plan to send asylum seekers to third countries while Denmark has recently pushed to establish a new, more restrictive European asylum system. But border nations, like Greece and Italy, are becoming the first dominoes to fall in a new wave of hard-line immigration policies.
Research shows that while the EU’s 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum has made significant progress, there is still room to grow, and the 2024 Asylum Procedures Regulation may have also put additional strain on border states like Greece, while also having only novel regulation of more hard-line policies.
These nations, faced with new bureaucratic hurdles and continued struggles with migration, seem to be implementing procedures that they deem necessary in order to make things work, and with the popularity of anti-migration sentiments across Europe, Greece’s policies may begin to be seen as popular, necessary, and effective under the EU’s new guidelines and across the continent.
With the EU failing to effectively police Greece’s human rights violations and adopting an inflexible migration framework, it may have pushed the nation to adopt more of the very policies the bloc decries. Analysis shows flexible migration policies could prove effective, but the ship may have already sailed. Germany has now instituted checks on its land borders, while Poland suspended asylum rights as migrants arrive from Belarus.
As the far-right grows across Europe, Greece’s new policies may be only the beginning and serve as a warning to those seeking a life on the continent. The EU’s inflexible migration framework may have helped stimulate hard-line policies that violate the human rights of refugees, and the winds seem to be shifting towards a more outwardly hostile European attitude.
