As far back as 1994 when I was inducted as an Ensign of the Hellenic Coast Guard, we were dealing with both refugees and economic migrants on Lesbos Island, which lies only ten nautical miles from the Turkish coast. At…
In November 2014, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière floated the idea of establishing ‘welcome and departure centres’ in major transit countries in North Africa, where applications for asylum would be processed. By removing the obligation to be on European…
There were three shelters for refugees who were just passing through Belgrade, the Serbian capital, in 2014, and five asylum centres for those who wished to apply for asylum. However, the capacities were insufficient, as more than 2,500 people were…
Until the partial opening of the borders through the Balkans in summer 2015, Patras – Greece’s third city and harbour – used to be the main transit port for irregular migrants heading to Italy and the rest of Europe. In…
Bulgaria is one among many European countries dealing with insufficient capacity and unhelpful nationalist politics in the recent ‘migration crisis’. The response to the increase in irregular entries across the Bulgarian-Turkish border since 2013 has been one of crisis management;…
In countries where irregular entry is a criminal offence, persons in need of international protection arriving as part of mixed flows are at risk of being prosecuted. Under Bulgarian law, foreigners may be sanctioned for crossing the border illegally by…
Europe continues to attract people facing persecution but the responsibility for receiving them is not shared equally amongst Member States. While Germany and Sweden together host nearly half of all asylum seekers in the European Union (EU), the countries on Europe’s borders receive…
It is redundant to say that the European Union (EU) is failing itself, failing refugees and failing humanity with its current policy towards immigration and asylum. The daily reports of more deaths at sea and on land, of battles between…
A pilot project called ‘Regional Mobility and Socioeconomic Integration of Refugees’ was proposed in 2014 as part of the Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action.[1] In practical terms it consists of a project to bring Colombian refugees in Ecuador to…
The European Union’s (EU’s) asylum system is riddled with factors that hold back its development. First of all, the responsibility-determination mechanism (the Dublin system) fails to share responsibility fairly between the Member States, and in addition largely disregards the realities…