Status: turn of the year 2021/22 At the moment there are officially 3.544 asylum seekers on the Greek islands Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros. Here you get an overview of the current situation on the islands. All figures come from the official statistics of the Greek Ministry of Migration, which you can view here. Under „National Situation: Migrant and Refugee Issue“ …
Question: Prison for solidarity with refugees
Domenico Lucano was sentenced to 13 years in prison on flimsy grounds for welcoming refugees as mayor. Together with other members of my group, I have asked the EU Commission how it deals with the conviction of former mayor Domenico Lucano for his reception of refugees and, more generally, with the increasing criminalization of human rights activists under …
Question: Unlawful repatriation of refugees to Libya
That Libya is not a safe place for people has been confirmed time and again by studies and court rulings. The EU Commission has ignored this fact for years and supports the Libyan Coast Guard in returning people fleeing to Libya. In its response to a joint question from several MEPs, the EU Commission refuses to take concrete steps and emphasizes general principles – which …
Question: Rejection of asylum applications of Syrian nationals in Greece
Greece rejects asylum applications from Syrian refugees on the grounds that they can go back to Turkey because Turkey is a safe third country. In reality, however, Turkey has not accepted any repatriations for some time, so the people concerned are stuck and can neither go back nor forward. Regardless of this, Greece now wants to change this practice to …
Question: Provisional measures on asylum seekers in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania
Together with seven other MEPs from our group, I asked the Commission on 1 October 2021 whether it considers Poland's imposition of a state of emergency and refusal to allow asylum procedures at the border to be compatible with EU law. We also asked what measures the Commission was taking with regard to illegal pushbacks and whether it was examining whether …
Letter to the EU Commission on surveillance in Greek camps
(DE) Together with my group colleague Alexandra Geese, I have written a letter to the Commission in which we explain how refugees in the new camps on the Greek islands are monitored around the clock and locked up like felons. The situation is almost certainly contrary to EU law, yet the camps are being funded with €37 million from the …
Leaves: „The German Shame of Kabul“
This text appeared in the Blättern für deutsche und Internationale Politik (November 2021) and you can also find it at this link. Just one day before the fall of Kabul, then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is said to have told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he would "fight to the death."[1] But when the Taliban on August 15 …
Study: Inadequate training for border officials
„I work at the [name redacted] border patrol station and have been in border patrol for a long time. Some of us no longer have the will or the strength to watch what is being done to these people. We send them back to Bosnia-Herzegovina every day, without papers, without processing, no matter who it is, women, children, it doesn't matter. There is no asylum, …
No more EU funding for forced labour in Eritrea
With the so-called "Emergency Trust Fund for Africa", the EU created an instrument in 2015 to "address the root causes of instability, displacement and irregular migration and to contribute to better migration management". This fund, which is outside the EU budget and therefore hardly subject to parliamentary control, has been repeatedly criticised by the European Parliament – also because of the …
Question: Criminalisation of protection seekers in Greece
In order to deter, Greece sentences those seeking protection to long prison terms – covered by the Commission, which refuses to intervene and does not declare itself competent. For example, Hanad Abdi Mohammad was sentenced to a total of 142 years in prison for taking the helm of a boat and saving 31 people in the process. With other Members, I asked whether …