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Greece is ending wide migrant legalization programs and introducing stricter detention measures for asylum seekers with rejected claims
ByDEREK GATOPOULOS Associated Press
ATHENS, Greece -- ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece volition extremity wide legalization programs for migrants and jailhouse those awaiting deportation nether tougher policies acceptable to instrumentality effect this summer, Migration Minister Makis Voridis said Friday.
Migrants with rejected asylum claims volition look a minimum of 2 years successful jail, with sentences commuted upon deportation, helium said.
The plans, outlined by Greece’s blimpish authorities — and intimately watched by different European Union subordinate states — were discussed astatine a Cabinet gathering this week. The European Union has pledged to marque deportations a precedence successful 2025 and finalize communal rules crossed the 27-nation bloc.
According to the European Commission, astir 80% of deportation orders crossed subordinate states are not carried out. Voridis said the complaint is adjacent higher successful Greece and urged the EU to acceptable clearer criteria for ineligible residence.
“We tin hold that someone’s economical necessity unsocial cannot beryllium grounds for ineligible migration. If we did judge that, (Europe) should hole to person hundreds of millions,” Voridis told backstage broadcaster Antenna.
Currently, migrants denied residence permits typically person six-month suspended sentences if they neglect to permission the country. Under the caller rules, a minimum jailhouse word volition beryllium imposed, the curate said.
A programme that allowed up to 40,000 migrants who had lived illegally successful Greece for astatine slightest 3 years to legalize their presumption was ended successful March. It volition not beryllium renewed to debar creating “distorted” semipermanent incentives, said Voridis.
Greece remains a cardinal introduction constituent for migrants into Europe and receives fiscal and operational enactment from the EU, including assistance from the borderline bureau Frontex.
However, Athens has faced planetary disapproval for alleged summary deportations — which it denies — and implicit its handling of a deadly 2023 shipwreck that killed hundreds.
Last week, lawyers representing survivors and families of the victims of that shipwreck said they were formally notified by naval prosecutors that 17 seashore defender officials volition look a transgression investigation. The enactment follows a two-year enquiry that recovered grounds for prosecution. ___
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