Mitsotakis warns EU of 'asymmetric' threat from Turkish border, Johansson calls for respecting asylum law

Amid preparations of EU’s new Pact on Asylum and Migration, Ylva Johansson Commissioner for Home Affairs visited Athens on Thursday, to hold talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at Maximos Mansion.
The meeting took place shortly after the announcement of the agreement reached between the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum and the European Commission, for the voluntary return of 5,000 asylum seekers in their home countries, funded by the European Union.
The one-month voluntary returns initiative that was jointly launched by the Commission, the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) and Greece, will offer an extra €2,000 to migrants having arrived after January 1 2020, and aims at “helping them reintegrate.”
The agreement is expected to relieve pressure from the islands, along with the transfer of another 10,000 persons to the Greek mainland.
”Refugees will not return – of course, they can’t return – but economic migrants that maybe know they will not get a positive asylum decision could be interested in doing that,” Johansson told reporters, according to Deutsche Welle.
However, the Commissioner also called for respecting asylum law, supporting that “individuals in the European Union have the right to apply for asylum. This is in the treaty, this is in international law. This we can’t suspend,” Johansson said.
She also added that the Commission would like to get further information in (NYT) reports supporting that Greece is allegedly holding migrants in a ‘secret extrajudicial location before expelling them to Turkey without due process’.
Mitsotakis noted the severity of the threat the EU bloc is facing, supporting that the recent developments in the Greek-Turkish border is not a “regular issue of migration, but a matter of national security”.
“Greece and Europe face an asymmetric threat,” at sea and land borders, after Turkey allowed thousands of migrants to reach Europe’s borders, Mitsotakis told Johansson, whilst slamming Turkey’s “weaponisation of migrants”.
The Greek Prime Minister also called for a proportional allocation of refugees from first-entry countries to other European states, with Johansson confirming that Germany would be among the countries to take in at least 1,600 unaccompanied minors.