by Aggelos Skordas
Germany is no longer accepting asylum seekers from Greece and Italy and is now resettling the last few refugees who reached the country under the relocation scheme agreed between the European Union member states. The decision, according to the German daily newspaper Die Welt, was announced by the country’s Interior Ministry on Monday and comes amid fears that migration flows will be on the rise once again due to the ongoing Turkish military operation “Olive Branch” in the Kurdish-majority Afrin Region of northern Syria.
The European relocation agreement officially expired on September 2017, although many countries have failed to comply with their responsibilities, while Germany has so far accepted just over one third of the refugees described under the agreement. “Germany largely completed the relocation in 2017”, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry told Die Welt. As explained, in the weeks to follow the country will take in only a small number of asylum seekers from Greece and Italy. “There are now virtually no more asylum seekers in Greece who could be considered for resettlement”, an Interior Ministry source told Deutsche Welle.
Despite the fact that on February 2017 solely some 1,200 migrants were resettled from Greece and Italy to 13 European countries some 500 are still waiting to be relocated from Italy to Germany and 40 more from Greece. “The relocation scheme ended in September 2017, meaning all applicants arriving after that date will no longer be eligible for resettlement. Germany largely completed all outstanding relocations by the end of 2017. In the coming weeks, Germany will only carry out the odd resettlement case that was left outstanding from last year”, Annegret Korff, a speaker for the German Interior Ministry pressed according to Deutsche Welle.
As of 24 January 2018, Germany has received a total of 10,273 asylum seekers (5,371 from Greece and 4,902 from Italy) becoming the bloc’s country that has “resettled the most people by far”, while France comes second with a sum of 4,886 relocations (4,400 from Greece and 486 from Italy) followed by Sweden (1,656 from Greece and 1,390 from Italy) and the Netherlands (1,754 from Greece and 891 from Italy). On the contrary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria have taken in only 12, 16 and 29 asylum seekers respectively. In total, 21,717 migrants and refugees have been relocated from Greece to other European countries and 11,742 from Italy.
It should be noted that when the two-year scheme was announced, in 2015, the European Union expected some 160,000 resettlements from the two countries of entry to other member states, a number which was later revised to 100,000 by September 2017. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), though, so far the relocated asylum seekers from Greece and Italy are no more than 33,459.
