Refugee

Greece should scrap a draft law that threatens to restrict access to protection for asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.

Athens is currently struggling with the biggest resurgence in refugee arrivals since 2015, when more than a million people crossed into Europe from Turkey via Greece.

There's just a couple of days left to catch the exhibition "Light on the Move" by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Muhammed Muheisen, organized by the UN's IOM migration agency at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens through Thursday.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said authorities want to reduce migrant flows during the winter and increase the number of expulsions.

The United Nations refugees agency UNHCR expressed concern on Thursday about Greek proposals to overhaul laws affecting asylum seekers, saying they could weaken the protection of refugees.

The town hall of Penteli, northeast of Athens, was attacked by vandals in the early hours of Thursday in what authorities see as a protest against local reactions to a refugee relocation scheme.

Greek MPs were presented on Tuesday morning with a draft bill aimed at reducing the number of refugees and migrants trapped in the country by lengthy bureaucratic procedures.

Greek authorities moved more refugees and migrants from overcrowded island camps to the mainland on Tuesday as the government, facing a surge in new arrivals, said it would take a hardline on those who did not qualify for asylum.

A court on Monday on the eastern Aegean island of Samos will hear a case brought by a local parents association against a teacher whom they accuse of encouraging students to ignore the wishes of their parents regarding their opposition to refugee students entering the school.

Greece and the European Union should not be held hostage to Turkey over migration, Greek Premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, as the country is looking for ways to limit refugee and migrant arrivals and decongest camps on the islands of the eastern Aegean.

The refugee centres in Bulgaria are filled to 9% of their capacity, with 454 residents, Dimitar Kirov, Director of Quality of the Procedure for International Protection at the State Agency for Refugees, told Focus Radio.