EU officials watch departure of the first relocated refugees from Greece (pics + vid)

A bevy of EU officials are in Athens on Wednesday for the departure of the first relocated refugees from Greece. European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who is in Athens and Lesbos on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the migration crisis, joined Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos and the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg Jean Asselborn at the departure of the first relocated refugees from Greece.

“The refugee crisis is above all and foremost a crisis for refugees,” said Schulz.

The Greek PM said that Wednesday was a “symbolic” day as the 30 first refugees were just a “drop in the ocean” but a start in the hopes that the drop would become a stream, “a stream of distribution of responsibility” according to the principles of the European Union. He remarked on the difficulties facing refugees who risked their lives to enter Europe. “Greece is a country with a humanitarian crisis of its own, but the Greek nation has opened its arms to these people,” he said, while underlining the importance of Turkey to participate in finding an effective solution for the refugee crisis.

The PM also made reference to the viral photo of the three grandmothers from Lesbos feeding a refugee baby. He said that the photo was highly symbolic and thus was chosen as a background for which to make his statements because “this photo is the real face of Europe, a face of humanity.”

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The relocation of six families from Syria and Iraq from Athens to Luxembourg is part of an EU-approved plan to ease the burden on border nations. The EU-funded scheme costs 780 million euros and will run over a period of two years. Around 86 people have already been transferred directly from Italy to Sweden and Finland under the scheme.

Now being applied in Greece, the relocation program resulted in moments of joy at Eleftherios Airport as smiling parents held young children who all posed for ‘selfies’ with Tsipras and Asselborn before bording their Aegean Airlines flight.

Greece has agreed to temporarily house up to 50,000 refugees on its territory this year, however this is just a drop in the ocean bearing in mind that more than 580,000 refugees entered Greece through its long sea border with Turkey in 2015 alone. This has caused huge financial and humanitarian problems to already cash-strapped Greece.