Refugee crisis

While European Union countries shut their doors to migrants - Italy and Malta last week refused to allow a rescue ship carrying more than 600 migrants to dock at their ports - Greek authorities are reopening unused camps and facilities across the mainland to accommodate the swelling number of asylum seekers.

As Greece continues to struggle with overcrowded migrant reception centers on the Aegean islands and greater pressure at the land border with Turkey, Fabrice Leggeri, the executive director of the European Union's border agency Frontex, has pledged more support if necessary.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday praised Greece and Italy for bearing brunt of the bloc's migration crisis and hit out at member states that have failed to show solidarity to countries on the frontline of the migration influx.

Five members of foreign aid groups accused of attempting to smuggle migrants into Greece were cleared by a Lesvos court on Monday. 

The five are three Spanish firefighters, who came to Greece at the peak of the refugee crisis to work for the Spanish group Proem-Aid, and two members of Danish non-government organization Team Humanity.

Five members of foreign aid groups accused of attempting to smuggle migrants into Greece were cleared by a Lesvos court on Monday. 

The five are three Spanish firefighters, who came to Greece at the peak of the refugee crisis to work for the Spanish group Proem-Aid, and two members of Danish non-government organization Team Humanity.

The trial of five members of foreign non-governmental organizations accused of attempted human smuggling was under way at a court on Lesvos on Monday. 

The five are three Spanish firefighters, who came to Greece at the peak of the refugee crisis to work for the Spanish group Proem-Aid, and two members of Danish non-government organization Team Humanity. 

Germany ranked first in hosting Syrian refugees resettled from Turkey in 2017, with more than 2,500 settling in the country, according to data from Turkey's migration authority.

Editor's note: A previous version of this interview contained minor spelling errors, now corrected

Odyssey, tragedy, deadlock. The three words that sum up each of the chapters in Nikos Pilos's 17-minute black-and-white documentary trilogy "Dying for Europe," which makes its Greek debut at the ongoing Thessaloniki festival, have been routinely used by international media to describe Europe's refugee crisis.

It's late winter 2016, at a makeshift cemetery for Muslim migrants on Lesvos, less than 10 nautical miles off the Turkish coast. An imam in a white hazmat suit reads a prayer as a 3-year-old girl who died of meningitis shortly after landing on the eastern Aegean island is laid to rest. A red excavator is on standby to cover her grave after the end of the short ritual.