Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Thursday that the European Union should speed up the revision of the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates the return of migrants to the country of their first entry to the bloc.
ATHENS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th September, 2018) Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Thursday that the European Union should speed up the revision of the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates the return of migrants to the country of their first entry to the bloc.
Greece is located on the first line of reception of undocumented migrants and in accordance with the agreement, Athens is obliged to accept all migrants who have moved to other European countries. The migration crisis was one of the main issues discussed at an informal EU leaders' meeting in Austrian Zalzburg on Thursday.
"We are not the first time discussing the refugee crisis. We have discussed this issue at many summits. This is the central political and ideological problem of the future of Europe, and it divides Europe into two camps today ... In the next period, we must speed up the procedures to revise the Dublin agreement, make it fair," Tsipras told reporters after the summit.
The European Union's Dublin Regulation, originally adopted in 1990 and amended in 2003 and 2013, asserts that the responsibility for asylum regulation falls upon first safe country the migrants reached on their arrival to the bloc. The regulation bans the transfer of asylum seekers to those EU member states "that do not guarantee a full and fair hearing of asylum claims." On March 27, Greece's Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas announced that Greece was no longer able to accept a single refugee more under the Dublin Regulation.
