Greece on Friday enforced a three-month freeze on asylum claims from migrants arriving by boat from North Africa, to stem a surge from Libya that the government has called an “invasion.”
The emergency legislation, approved by a majority of 177 out of 293 lawmakers, allows authorities to detain asylum seekers in camps for up to 18 months.
Support for the bill mainly came from the conservative government’s MPs and right-wing lawmakers.
“We have made the difficult but absolutely necessary decision to temporarily suspend the examination process of asylum applications for those arriving by sea from North African countries,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement to German tabloid Bild on Friday.
“This decision sends a clear message, leaving no room for misinterpretation, to human trafficking networks: Greece is not an open transit route. The journey is dangerous, the outcome uncertain, and the money paid to smugglers ultimately wasted,” he said.
Greece’s migration ministry says over 14,000 migrants have reached the country this year, including over 2,000 in recent days from Libya.
The influx has mainly hit Crete—Mitsotakis’s home island and one of Greece’s top travel destinations—sparking anger among local authorities and tourism operators.
“Any migrants entering illegally will be arrested and detained,” the prime minister told parliament this week.
“Greece cannot have boats totalling 1,000 people a day,” Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told Skai TV, adding that the country will undertake a “draconian revision” of how it deals with migrants.
“The Greek ministry for migration is not a hotel—nobody can enter illegally, ask for asylum and receive benefits, three meals a day and shelter—all that at the expense of Greek and European taxpayers,” Plevris said.
Some 8,000 migrants have landed in Crete since the beginning of the year, according to the migration ministry.
Plevris—formerly a member of the nationalist LAOS party and now part of Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party—has called the recent influx an “invasion from North Africa.”
On Friday, he told parliament that out of a group of over 500 migrants who recently reached Crete, the vast majority are young Egyptian men not entitled to asylum.
Greece took similar steps in 2020 during a migration surge at its land border with Turkey.
To manage the influx, the government could reopen camps built after the 2015 migration crisis, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said this week.
Mitsotakis also told parliament that it would build up to two additional camps on Crete.
