BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th March, 2020) As the European Union, in a bid to mitigate the crisis on the Greek-Turkish border, offers to pay 2,000 Euros ($2,200) each to migrants on the Greek islands for their voluntary return, questions arise as to whether the measure can bring a sustainable solution or more profound actions are needed.
The new scheme to facilitate migrants' voluntary return was unveiled by the European commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, during her visit to Greece on Thursday.
Johansson, a Swedish Socialist, specified that the temporary scheme will be limited to one month and reserved to those migrants on the Greek islands who arrived before January 1. The commissioner expressed hope that the allowance worth of 2,000 euros will help them "reintegrate in the country of origin."
She estimated that 5,000 migrants would be eligible for the "voluntary return." The repatriation itself will be carried out by the EU and Greece, with the support from the International Organization for Migration and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex).
Greece is the first entry point for hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants from the middle East, Asia and Africa, who flocked to Turkey to cross the Aegean Sea or the land border with Greece and enter the EU.
Under the previous left Syriza government, Greece was tolerant to irregular migrants entering its mainland territory and its islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios before reaching the continent and taking the "Balkan route" to Western Europe, mainly Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel championed an open-door policy in 2015.
After the closure of the Balkan route in 2016 by Austria, Slovenia, Serbia and Macedonia, Greece got bloated with tens of thousands of migrants, trapped in squalid camps, such as Moria on Lesbos.
According to the UN Refuge Agency, there are about 43,000 migrants in the camps on the islands, designed for only 6,000 refugees. The local population, after having generously welcomed them at the beginning, are now furious and want the migrants to leave. The main revenue of these idyllic islands, tourism, has totally disappeared and the economy of the islands has been ruined.
The EU's new voluntary return scheme was agreed with the centre-right Greek government, which has taken a tougher approach than its predecessor to stop undocumented migrants from getting into Greece. It has become especially challenging after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he could no longer stem the flow of migrants and refugees following renewed violence in Syria's Idlib province and openly enticed migrants to move to the Greek border.
Greece fears a sudden assault by thousands of migrants massed at the border, who would try to overwhelm the Greek border guards. Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic have already expressed readiness to send border guards to help Greece.
The situation is tense. According to Greek media, two Turkish F-16 fighter bombers violated Greek air space over Evros on Wednesday. The same day, Greece's Shipping Ministry reported that a Turkish patrol boat deliberately rammed a Greek Coast Guard vessel off the Greek island of Kos.
DILEMMA AROUND UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN
It is not the first time that European countries try to pay to get rid of the burden of migrants. This very idea proves that many of them do not qualify for a refugee status since this status means that you are in danger in your home country and cannot return.
Figures show that apart from Syrians fleeing the war, there are many Afghans, Pakistanis and West Africans among migrants who head to Europe in search for a better life. But poverty does not give anybody a status of refugee.
Another problem is scores of unaccompanied children in the Greek camps. According to Doctors Without Borders, there are more than 14,000 of them on the islands.
At a presser in Greece, Johansson announced that seven EU nations had agreed to relocate 1,600 unaccompanied children from the camps, seen as especially vulnerable.
The decision, led by Germany, has triggered a backlash from the opposition AfD party.
"The decision of the grand coalition to admit children and young people from the refugee camps in Greece means a dam break. We all know that the number of up to 1,600 people agreed will not remain at that level. The call for family reunification will soon be raised so that children and adolescents do not have to live permanently separated from their parents," the AfD co-leader in the Bundestag, Alexander Gauland, told Sputnik.
According to the politician, "there is no question that Germany should do its utmost to improve the situation of people in the Greek refugee camps," but the money that Germany would spend on relocating and looking after unaccompanied children could have been directed at some of more sustainable migration solutions.
Gauland also believes that taking in such children would mean encouraging other parents to weaponize their kids to get to Europe. In addition, it sends the "wrong signal" to Erdogan that "his tactic of putting Europe under pressure with refugees is starting to show results," he added.
Another point of concern is that some migrants head to European countries in the hopes of getting generous social benefits. In November 2019, a Princeton University study confirmed it to be a factor, while pointing to a link between low social benefits and declining immigration. The research was based on figures from Denmark over the past 10 years.
In a comment to Sputnik, the Alternative for Germany member of the Bundestag for Hessen, Uwe Schulz, urged Europe and Berlin to pursue a "stringent course" and secure the EU's external border so as "not to further stimulate the pull effect" of social benefits on migration.
"That is why the so-called asylum seekers apply for asylum in Germany and not, for example, in other EU member countries such as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria or Hungary. The social benefits in the EU countries mentioned are simply too low. Of course, this also has a pull effect. The social benefits are decisive for the selection of the country where they want to go," he argued.
Multiple accounts that even refugees from Syria, where the war is still raging, are mostly young men raise the same issue.
WILL PAYMENTS HELP STEM THE MIGRANT FLOW?
Questions also emerge as to how effective the new "voluntary return" scheme is, according to Thierry Mariani, a European Parliament member from France's National Rally party.
"This measure ... has no serious significance; this only affects a few thousand people out of tens of thousands of illegal migrants in Greece. We give them a few cents as viaticum so that Europeans, in particular the European Commission, well represented by the Swedish Socialist Commissioner Johansson, can have a good conscience for cheap and still show that 'they do something,'" Mariani told Sputnik.
The lawmaker expressed hope that undocumented migrants would receive the money only after the arrival in their home countries.
"France has long tried this system, via the French Development Agency (AFD) which for a voluntary return, gave up to 3,500 EUR. The method consisted in financing the migrant returning home, for example in Burkina Faso, by granting him an amount there, in his country, every 3 months, with verification that his little work at home was real and that he was fixed," he added.
He noted that a similar system was in place in the 2010s for Romas, but did not prove effective as they "returned very easily to France after, since Romania is in the EU, and created slums again at the gates of major French cities."
"This shows that the European Union is on its own and does not know what to do, while the solution is simply firmness; firmness with Erdogan and his unacceptable blackmail, firmness with migrants, by absolutely closing the doors to illegal immigration," he concluded.
Filip Dewinter, a member of the Belgian Federal parliament from the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang party, agrees that only hard-line stance on migration could prove effective.
"Expulsions should be organized on a grand scale, with dedicated planes to bring them back, and not by putting expelled migrants on a commercial flight with 2 policemen. These expulsions are incredibly expensive, when they succeed ... The only solution is to refuse all illegal migrants, close all borders to them and repatriate them immediately. That would rapidly stop the flow. This idea of giving them money does not solve anything," he told Sputnik.
OVERDUE DUBLIN REFORM, OVERHAUL OF the DEAL WITH TURKEY
Sputnik approached European Parliament members from Greece to find out their view on the current crisis.
Eva Kaili, a European Parliament member from Greece's Panhellenic Socialist Movement, believes that the only way to resolve the crisis around migrants and refugees in her country is to reform the Dublin regulation, which stipulates that migrants must ask for asylum in the first country of arrival.
"I hope that as soon as the Dublin will be reformed -it has been 'frozen' at the Council although it passed from the European Parliament- then safe & legal humanitarian corridors will start working properly. At the same time I believe we need to explore more options to support our neighbors to deal with the different causes of immigration in a political, economic and operational way of tackling the problem at its roots," Kaili told Sputnik.
Kostas Papadakis of the Communist Party of Greece, agrees with his counterpart from the European Parliament. He, however, goes further and calls for revising the 2016 migration deal with Turkey.
"The fact is that EU and Greek government (the previous and the current one) are stuck with the line of caging refugees and immigrants within Greek Islands, under the provisions of the EU -Turkey Statement which is imposing this unacceptable situation. The direction of mass deportations (EU call them smoothly...'returns') back in the battlefields of war, independently of the terms, are moving in the same damaging direction. The only real way out is the challenging and cancellation of the EU Turkey Statement as well as of the Dublin Regulation, and with a procedure of asylum, being held within Turkey under the auspices of EU and UN the refugees to be moved directly to the countries of their real destination," Papadakis told Sputnik.
