Greece Preparing To Receive 20,000 Asylum
The European Commission and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Athens have launched a joint program aimed at providing 20,000 reception spaces in apartments and hotels for refugees eligible for housing in the European Union and for asylum seekers in Greece.
The program, signed by budget commissioner Cristalina Georgieva, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) UNHCR Assistant Commissioner George Okhotobo and Greek Immigration Policy Minister Ioannis Mosalas, will fund the EU budget of 80 million euros and be implemented by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The project was approved at a mini-summit in October in Brussels for countries on the Balkan route.
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"This program allows for the better and more acceptable reception of refugees and helps make the European housing program more attractive to them," Georgieva told a news conference.Greece has pledged to provide more than 20,000 additional homes in reception centers and camps, while Georgieva expressed confidence that "more than 30,000" will be available by January.
Measures are being taken to provide some 5,000 homes at the registration and verification centers on the islands of Lesbos, Leros and Kyos, as well as some 3,000 already available in Athens, while nine tents have been set up for about 1,500 places on the border with Macedonia, a European source said. The authorities include about 5,500 places in detention centers.
The latter, which has been closed almost entirely after the left-wing government's decision to put an end to the detention of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, will be re-operated as part of a policy of forced deportation of migrants deemed incompetent after Greece pledged to implement it under strong pressure from its European partners.
A government source said his country hoped to "use this only at the end of the deportation" to avoid the detention of those who were considered undesirable for months. But 123 Moroccan immigrants arrived in Turkey during the influx of refugees and suspended in Greece after Macedonia decided not to permit The people from areas of conflict were taken over the weekend from a center in Athens to a detention camp in Corinthia in the southwestern Peloponnese region. Police arrested the rioters and destroyed them.