EU chides Greece for response to migrant crisis

The European Commission says Greece's response to the refugee emergency continues to be too slow and that it's not sending enough migrants who don't qualify for asylum back home.

A report released Wednesday said that the deployment of specialist teams known as hotspots to register and fingerprint migrants has been held up in part by staffing and infrastructure shortages.

The commission's report said that "only one hotspot is currently fully operational." The hotspot scheme was launched in September and Greece is supposed to have five up and running.

The report noted that almost 20,000 migrants have been deported since the beginning of last year, but that "this remains insufficient in the context of over 800,000 arrivals in 2015." [AP]