PM hosts meeting on migration with EU commissioners, ministers
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday convened a meeting of key cabinet members and two visiting European Union commissioners at the Maximos Mansion to discuss immigration policy and reform.
Mitsotakis had earlier held talks with newly appointed commissioners for Promoting the European Way of Life Margaritis Schinas and for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson at his office, where he stressed that as a frontline country in the migration/refugee crisis, Greece relies on European support and would like to see more burden-sharing from other member states.
“I think it is very significant that you chose Athens for your first visit, given the context of what is going on the region,” the prime minister told the commissioners at the meeting with members of his cabinet later, also hailing their plans to visit Ankara on Friday.
The migration/refugee crisis, he added, “is not a Greek-Turkish issue, it is an issue that concerns all of Europe.”
The visits are part of plans for an overhaul of migration and asylum policy – described by Schinas earlier this week as “one of the most emblematic priorities of the Commission.”
In Athens on Thursday, Johansson assured Mitsotakis that the Commission will be examining ways to improve the European mechanism for migrant returns, but also to review the controversial Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that undocumented migrants caught in an EU country are returned to the country of entry into the block and that first-entry countries are responsible for processing their asylum applications.
