The Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, took part today in the informal meeting of Foreign and Home Affairs Ministers, in Paris. The meeting, which was also attended by the Alternate Civil Protection Minister for migration policy, Georgios Koumoutsakos, looked at how to confront the increasing migrant flows in the Mediterranean and was convened on the initiative of the French government.
Mr. Varvitsiotis stressed the importance of dealing with the refugee issue as a European problem, highlighting the need for the European Union to guarantee the proper implementation of the existing agreements on readmission of illegal migrants and to draw up new agreements with countries of origin or transit.
The Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs also characterized as vital the coordination of all the individual policies of the European Union – external, trade and visa policies – and the increasing of development assistance to facilitate returns. Finally, he asked for additional strengthening of FRONTEX and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), and for the migration issue to be carried over as a priority of the next European Commission, which must be reflected in the European budget.
More specifically, the Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs made the following statement:
“At this informal meeting, we talked about the issue of Migrant trafficking in the Mediterranean. Although we are not currently in a crisis, the data show that flows are increasing. We highlighted the fact that Greece, even today, is under increased pressure from the Turkish coast, and of course we asked for European coordination based on the bilateral agreements on the return of persons who are not eligible for asylum to their countries of origin, and of course with the coordination of all the European policies, external policy, the visa policy, the development assistance policy. Our goal is to put pressure on the countries of origin of illegal migrants who are not eligible for asylum and on transit countries to cooperate with Europe so that there can be an effective system of returns.
We believe that one of the pillars of the European policy is the system of returns, in tandem with the other pillars, which are adequate funding for services related to the refugee and migration issue, and, of course, strengthening of the spirit of solidarity and burden sharing.”
July 22, 2019