Athens tighten migration laws: Greek PM accuses EU of indifference to country’s problems

For more than 14 hours, the debate continued in the Greek Parliament, which resulted in a significant tightening of migration legislation. The vast majority of lawmakers supported this move.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in his speech to parliamentarians said that the state system of asylum has long been paralyzed. According to him, in the future “every application [for asylum] should be examined after six months, and not after nine.” If the applicant does not cooperate with the authorities, the application is automatically declared unfounded.

Mitsotakis also criticized the countries of the European Union, which, contrary to the ostentatious “European unity”, in practice “refuse to share even the smallest migration burden.”

In this regard, the Greek government set out to accelerate bureaucratic procedures, including the process of deportation of migrants to Turkey, respectively, with the Refugee Pact. In addition, to stabilize the situation on the Greek islands, by the end of the year about 20 thousand migrants will be transported from there to the mainland. Now there are about 35 thousand migrants, which is the highest figure since the entry into force of the pact concluded between Turkey and the EU.

As News Front previously reported, in some Aegean islands the number of migrants exceeded the number of local residents.