German government sees ‘progress’ in talks with Greece about migrant

Talks continue between the German and Greek authorities over the issue of returning migrants and asylum seekers who may have already applied for, or even been granted refugee status in Greece, but then continued their journey on to Germany, and begun the process again.

Under the EU’s Dublin regulation, countries within the bloc can return those who have already begun the process of applying for asylum, or even been granted it, to the first country of entry in the bloc, rather than assessing a candidate’s eligibility once again. However, in practice, not all return requests are processed smoothly.

“We have been working on this intensively over the last few weeks and months,” said a spokesperson for the German government on Wednesday (March 19), reported the news agency Reuters.

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‘Advanced stage of negotiations’

“We are now at a relatively advanced stage [in negotiations],” they continued. The German government said it was hopeful that the obstacles that had previously been in place, preventing Germany from sending back ‘Dublin cases’ to Greece would now fall away.

Some of the newfound optimism is down to a change of migration minister in Greece. “We are really hopeful that due to this change in minister, there won’t be any more delays,” a German government spokesperson reportedly told Reuters.

Lawyer and politician Maikis Voridis was announced as the new Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum last week. According to a report in Britain’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper, Greece has “tacked to the right” in appointing Voridis as migration minister.

The Guardian reported that Voridis was a “former far-right student activist,” adding that he is still a “self-described nationalist.” Voridis used to be the head of the youth wing of the Epen party, described by the Guardian as a “far-right party founded by the former dictator Georgios Papadopoulos.” The party “enjoyed close ties” in the European parliament with France’s late National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

When Voridis was first brought into a coalition government back in 2011, he told the Guardian at the time that he saw himself as a “national liberal,” and said at the time that the far-right ties were far behind him. He is now part of the New Democracy Party, currently in power.

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More Dublin returns expected under incoming German government

Germany is in the process of forming a new government, to be led by presumptive Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz, of the conservative CDU/CSU union. He will be joined by the social democrat SPD party, the party of current and outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Coalition talks between these two parties are ongoing but Merz has declared he would like to form the new government before Easter.

The newly-voted parliament will begin sitting next week. In the meantime, Germany is trying hard to speed up the number of returns it makes according to the Dublin regulation. It has even begun to open special centers, so-called Dublin deportation centers to do just that.

Many of the so-called Dublin return cases who arrive in Germany entered the EU via Greece. In the first ten months of 2024, at least 21,110 individuals filed asylum applications in Germany after first being registered in Greece.

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German courts hold up returns

In theory, many of these people should be subject to a return procedure. However, in August 2024, a German court in the city of Gelsenkirchen ruled that returning refugees to Greece could be deemed “unreasonable,” as it could be argued they would be “unable to find secure accommodation and unable to support themselves through legal employment or government support.”

However, even if they are returned, information obtained by the Left party (Die Linke) in December 2024, suggested that by autumn 2024, over 15,000 foreign nationals who had previously been transferred to another EU country under the Dublin III regulation were again residing in Germany.

Of these more than 4,000 individuals re-entered Germany in 2023 and 2024 after being returned to other EU countries. Italy accounted for the highest number of previous transfers, followed by Poland, reported dpa.

Under the EU’s new Asylum and Migration pact, which is due to be rolled out over the course of next year, countries will have an extended period of time under which they can return people who qualify as so-called Dublin cases. According to information provided by the European Commission to InfoMigrants in May 2024, member states can request a return via the Dublin regulation or updates thereof at “any time”.

Until the new regulations are in place, current regulations stipulate that a Dublin transfer must take place within six months of the agreement of the other member state, except if a person is in custody, by which it is extended to 12 months, or a fugitive, by which it is extended to 18 months, according to information on the BAMF website.

The current regulation often led to a de facto situation in many countries where would-be asylum seekers would lie low until the period of time by which it would be more difficult to send them back and then attempt to begin the process again in their chosen country. The European Commission wants to end that possibility, and underlined this in its latest communication on the subject last week.

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Tens of thousands of requests sent, only a few thousand actually returned

According to the EU’s Asylum Information Database AIDA and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles ECRE, in 2023, Germany sent a total of 74,622 outgoing requests to other member states, out of which 55,728 were accepted.

In 2023, the outgoing requests mainly went to Croatia, Italy and Austria, showed information from the German government in response to a parliamentary question on the subject in March 2024.

There were only 167 transfers from Greece to Germany in 2023, compared to 212 in 2022. Most of those were due to family unity provisions under the Dublin regulation, noted AIDA/ECRE. In 2023, Germany only transferred three people back to Greece, although 5,523 outgoing requests were sent.

In February 2024, the German Federal Office of Migration and Refugees (BAMF) established a new protocol with Greece, according to information obtained by the migrant-rights association Pro Asyl via a freedom of information request. The new regulation was designed to allow Germany to send back Dublin cases who came originally from Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In the information obtained by Pro Asyl, BAMF reportedly stated that Greece was now “accepting returns of people from these countries of origin and will individually guarantee their human rights-compliant accommodation.”

BAMF reportedly instructed Germany’s federal states, which are responsible for returns procedures, to “treat transfers to Greece from the mentioned nationalities with priority.”

According to BAMF’s latest figures from 2024, the majority of Germany’s requests for a Dublin return went to Greece (15,453), followed by Croatia (14,068) and then Italy (12,841). However, only 5,827 of these people were actually sent back via those requests. For Greece, 22 were sent back, for Croatia 533 and for Italy just three.