Greece calls on EU to sanction member states who refuse to accept migrant relocation quotas

As Greece continues to struggle to accommodate the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who’ve recently have made their way from Turkey, its government said that it would call on the EU to impose sanctions on member states who refuse to accept a portion of the new arrivals. 

The Greek government contends that countries like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, who continue to reject mandatory migrant relocation quotas, place an unfair burden on EU states like Greece, Italy, and Spain.

In a statement given on Friday, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, “I will say this clearly: I will raise the issue of specific sanctions for European countries that refuse to take part in a fair distribution of refugees on a European level.”

Mitsotakis then added: “It is an act of hypocrisy. You cannot enjoy the benefits of (border-free travel and trade) and not accept 1,000 or 2,000 refugees as part of EU management of the issue.”

Over the summer, Greece saw a drastic spike in migrant arrivals from Turkey. In August, Greece saw close to 7,000 migrants arrive by boat, the highest number since 2016.

The number of illegal migrant arrivals, which once averaged 60 per day, has now reached an average of 278 per day. This year alone, nearly 22,000 migrants are believed to have landed in Greece.

As a result of the surge in migration, the reception centers on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios have been overwhelmed.

Moria, the reception center on Lesbos, was originally designed to hold 3,000 migrants. Today, it’s currently hosting over 13,000.

On other islands, such as Samos, the migration situation is even more severe. One reception center designed to hold 650 people now hosts over 4,000, Kathimerini reports.

Close to 23,000 migrants are thought to be living on the different Greek islands throughout the Aegean, with around 42 percent coming from Afghanistan.

Last week, the EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos along with the German interior minister Horst Seehofer traveled to Turkey and Greece to see if something could be done to salvage the 2016 EU-Turkey migration agreement.