Dublin Regulation

As many as 1410 irregular migrants were been expelled over the course of 2016, a sharp increase compared to the previous year, the Interior Ministry has said.

Most of those sent back were nationals of Iraq (494), Afghanistan (417), and Iran (113), followed by those from Syria (85) and Turkey (68).

The figure is 77% bigger than 2015, when 797 people were expelled.

Over the past few months there have been repeated calls from a number of European Union member-states to resume the transfer of asylum seekers to Greece under the Dublin Regulation, which provides for the return of applicants to the member-states through which they first entered the EU.

The EU has recommended that member states return asylum seekers to Greece as of March next year, despite the poor conditions and overcrowding of its refugee facilities.

The European Commission on Thursday recommended the gradual resumption of the Dublin regulations, which state that migrants must seek asylum in the European Union member-state they first arrived in.

The European Union Summit on Wednesday in Brussels will primarily deal with the refugee crisis, the free trade agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA) and relations with Russia, but, nonetheless, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appears determined to bring the issue of Greek debt to the table.

Germany Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has repeated his call for Greece to implement the so-called Dublin regulations, which state that migrants must seek asylum in the European Union member-state they first arrived in.

European officials are calling on Athens to take action by the end of this year ahead of the review and reactivation of the Dublin Regulation, which would lead to EU member-states returning migrants to Greece.

The Greek government is adamantly opposing the revival of a European Union rule that would allow the forcible return to its territory of asylum-seekers who entered the bloc via Greece — a path followed by more than a million people in the past two years.

One day after a senior German official suggested that his country could send migrants back to Greece, the European Commission on Monday urged Greece to implement the so-called Dublin Regulation.

The agreement, which is currently under review, stipulates that migrants who have traveled on to other nations in the bloc via Greece be returned to Greece.

The European Commission tabled two proposals for the revision of the ‘Dublin Accord’ on immigration, Wednesday in Brussels.