By N. Bellos
The European Commission this week clearly backed statements by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière regarding the refugee crisis in Europe and the potential return of asylum seekers to Greece, with a spokeswoman reiterating on Monday that the Greek government is obliged to reinstate the Dublin Treaty.
The Commission’s response supported de Maizière’s position of returning third country nationals to Greece for an examination of their asylum requests, if the country was the first EU territory that they had entered. Greece witnessed a flood of Mideast war refugees and Third World migrants landing on a handful of eastern Aegean islands over the last year and a half, all having set out unhindered from the opposite Turkish coast.
The spokeswoman said Brussels has called on Athens to restore the Dublin treaty’s provisions by the end of the year.
The German minister was recently quoted by the daily "Welt" as saying that EU countries have greatly contributed to improving the situation for refugees in Greece, therefore, third country nationals could be returned to the east Mediterranean country for their asylum requests to be examined.
Back in the Greek capital on Tuesday, the leftist government’s relevant minister for the migration crisis, Yiannis Mouzalas, called the German minister’s statements about returning refugees to the crisis-plagued country “out of time and place.”
In comments to a local radio station, Mouzalas, who is a non-elected member of the Cabinet, said de Maizière’s comments were not helpful, whereas the subsequent press attention was a “natural exaggeration”.
