The Commission assessed Greece’s response to the migration crisis, and found it wanting in many areas, Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said.
An evaluation of Greece’s frontier protection, conducted in November, had shown “serious deficiencies in the carrying out of external border controls that must be overcome … by the Greek authorities,” the commissioner added.
Dombrovskis said “more needs to be done [by Greece] … This includes proper reception, registration, relocation or return of migrants in order to bring Schengen’s functioning back to normal.”
He said the Commission would help and Greece “whenever we can.”
“We know that in the meantime Greece has started undertaking efforts towards rectifying and complying with the Schengen rules,” Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who is Greek, said. “We will only save Schengen by applying Schengen.”
- Athens now has three months to improve the situation, or the Commission could recommend other countries reintroduce border checks “to protect the common interest of the Schengen area,” a Commission statement said.
Those controls could be reintroduced for six months, or up to two years if necessary.
As a next step, the members of the Schengen zone — 22 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — will discuss the Commission’s assessment of Greece’s migration policies.
A group of northern EU countries, led by Germany, pushed the Commission to take a tougher line on Greece over migration.
Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said Monday “it’s a myth that the Greek-Turkish border can’t be controlled,” adding that Greece has one of the strongest naval fleets in Europe.
Since the beginning of this year, 45,361 migrants have arrived in Greece by sea, the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday. It said 90 percent were refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
politico.eu
27/1/16
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Crise des migrants - La Grèce manque sérieusement à ses obligations de membre de Schengen...
ReplyDeleteLes contrôles aux frontières extérieures de l'UE montrent de sérieuses lacunes en Grèce. Le pays a manqué à ses obligations en tant que membre de l'Espace Schengen, a constaté la Commission européenne dans un rapport d'évaluation officiel publié mercredi.
La Commission s'est penchée mercredi sur le rapport d'évaluation de la Grèce, le résultat de visites surprises que des experts de la Commission, des Etats membres et de l'agence européenne de surveillance des frontières extérieures Frontex ont menées en novembre à la frontière terrestre entre la Grèce et la Turquie et sur une série d'îles grecques.
Bien que les experts reconnaissent que les autorités grecques sont fortement sous pression, le rapport affirme que l'identification et l'enregistrement des réfugiés entrants n'était pas efficace.
Les empreintes digitales n'étaient pas enregistrées systématiquement dans le système et l'authenticité des documents de voyage n'était pas systématiquement vérifiée via des bases de données telles que le SIS et celle d'Europol........http://www.rtl.be