Greece: One large refugee “hotspot”

In the meantime approximately 400 refugees spent the night at Victoria Square, downtown Athens, while another 1,000 refugees arrived at Piraeus port this morning from the Greek Eastern Aegean islands.

Brussels has warned of a brewing “humanitarian crisis” in Greece and the western Balkans. Reactions from Greece, the European Commission and the Dutch rotating EU presidency for the meeting called by Austria today with Balkan state leaders, from which Greece is excluded.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi is on a first official visit to Greece today and tomorrow.
Grandi will visit Athens and Lesvos and is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Brussels has warned of a brewing “humanitarian crisis” in Greece and the western Balkans after a series of border restrictions in recent days prompted backups and unrest along the main route used by nearly 1m migrants to reach Europe, the Financial Times write today.

FYROM police on Monday closed border crossings with Greece following clashes with hundreds of rejected Afghan asylum seekers.

Nikola Poposki, FYROM’s foreign minister, said the clampdown was prompted by decisions of neighbouring Serbia and Croatia to turn away Afghan asylum seekers on Sunday. That move, along with Austria’s decision to accept only 80 asylum claims a day, has sent tremors through a route that stretches from Greece to northern Europe via the Balkans.
Balkan countries began denying entry to asylum seekers from countries other than Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in late November, leading to angry protests by Moroccan and Pakistani migrants.
But the decision by Macedonia is the first apparent crackdown on asylum seekers from Afghanistan. It has far greater potential consequences because of the numbers involved. Afghans have accounted for 29 per cent of refugees reaching Greece from Turkey in recent days.
This has prompted fears among EU officials and aid workers that the closure could create a deadly backlog of migrants in Greece, and overwhelm Athens’ capacity to care for them.
Adding to their concern, the region is already bracing for a renewed surge of migrant arrivals once winter storms in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas subside — potentially as early as mid-March.