Greece is at breaking point with migrant crisis: Greek PM

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday at the European People’s Party (EPP) summit, declared that Greece had reached its limits with migrant arrivals and called for a new EU asylum policy.

Mitsotakis reminded his audience that sharing the burden of migration flows and solidarity among EU countries should not remain an empty promise, but should form the core of a policy supporting countries that form the external borders of the European Union.

The Greek PM said that the situation in Greece had reached its limits and called for the new European Commission to focus on what needs to be done towards a new unified asylum policy that will replace the Dublin Regulation for asylum application. (The regulation entered into force in 2013.)

“Right now, we are receiving 500 refugees and migrants on a daily basis. The situation on the islands is very difficult,” said Mitsotakis as he addressed a panel of new EPP deputies at the European Parliament.

According to the Migration and Home Affairs page of the European Commission, “The large-scale, uncontrolled arrival of migrants and asylum seekers has put a strain not only on many member states’ asylum systems, but also on the Common European Asylum System as a whole.”

The volume and concentration of arrivals, it notes, “has exposed in particular the weaknesses of the Dublin System, which establishes the member state responsible for examining an asylum application based primarily on the first point of irregular entry.”