Greece Proposes Suspending Asylum Requests in Emergencies
Greece said on Thursday, 1 October 2026, that the EU should develop an emergency mechanism to temporarily suspend applications for asylum in major migration crises. Migration Minister Thanos Plevris made the proposal as he arrived at a meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers in Luxembourg, citing the surge into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta as an example of an emergency the current tools cannot handle.
Spain estimates more than 72,000 migrants entered the North African enclave in late July. Most returned, but around 10,000 are still there. Plevris said the EU migration pact had helped curb arrivals and increase migrant returns, but that the measures taken so far were not sufficient to deal with emergencies, where enhanced border surveillance and suspension of asylum should be possible.
Greece was on the front line of the 2015-16 crisis, when more than a million people from the Middle East and Africa crossed into Europe. Arrivals have since dropped, although Greek Aegean islands have seen a rise in migrant boats from Libya in recent years. Athens stopped processing asylum applications from migrants arriving from North Africa by sea for a few months last year and passed legislation to fast-track deportation of rejected asylum seekers.
At the same meeting, Greece, along with Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, known as the Group of Five, said they had agreed on concrete steps towards establishing return hubs in a non-EU country as part of a wider European push to increase deportations and curb irregular migration. Locations and a timetable have yet to be announced.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：雅典希腊议会大楼。来源：Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 3.0
