The Greek government is breaking the law, and the EU is going along with it.
That’s the basic summary of a leaked report from the European anti-fraud office, OLAF, showing how the EU’s border agency, Frontex, acquiesces to Greece’s illegal, and often violent, pushbacks of migrants and asylum seekers trying to enter Greece, back over the border to Turkey.
Some in the EU leadership might think this is old news. The OLAF report circulated internally earlier this year, and its documentation of past crimes has already led to the resignation of Frontex’s head, Fabrice Leggeri.
But here’s the thing: the same crimes are still happening today.
Greek authorities are still illegally pushing people back to Turkey, and Frontex continues to operate in Greece the same as before.
The law is clear: everyone seeking protection has a right to apply for asylum and should be given that opportunity. People can’t just be shoved back across a border with no legal process, and they can’t be subjected to violence.
But in Greece, the authorities, including through proxies, are assaulting, robbing, and stripping asylum seekers and migrants, including children, before summarily pushing them back to Turkey. For more than a decade, these abuses have been reported by UN agencies and other intergovernmental and non-governmental groups.
The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Greece to prevent the summary return of asylum seekers stranded at Turkey’s borders.
Yet the Greek government continues to dismiss these concerns, keeps denying the abuses, and even tries to silence those reporting on illegal incidents, using the threat of criminal penalties.
Frontex, whose mandate requires personnel to respect fundamental rights, stands by and does nothing. The European Commission, which should be opening legal proceedings against the Greek government for violating EU laws, looks the other way.
Instead of doing their job and upholding rights, these EU actors are upholding the Greek government’s fiction – and hundreds of thousands of people suffer as a result.
