Greece is on the frontline of the EU’s new deportation policy

It means longer detention to coerce asylum applicants who’ve been turned down to leave voluntarily

Should they stay or should they go? A Syrian father seeking asylum in Greece displays his family’s sleeping quarters at a makeshift camp in Ritsona, 100km north of Athens, in 2016 (Photo: John T Psaropoulos)

European Union members are this month discussing a common returns policy for non-legally resident migrants proposed by its executive, the European Commission.

The Commission would like it agreed by the European Council of government leaders at the end of the month, so it may be ratified by national parliaments and enforced by June 2026.

The European Union approves some 45 percent of asylum applications on average. Of the remainder, 90 percent end up remaining on European soil because there is no effective policy to return them, say European officials.

As Greek migration minister Makis Voridis said presenting the new proposals in parliament’s European Affairs Committee on May 15, “Without a returns policy, no migration policy has any meaning.”

His predecessor, International law expert Dimitris Kairidis, who served as migration minister from June 2023 to June 2024 and hails from the liberal wing of the ruling conservative New Democracy party, agreed. “If we want to save the Geneva Convention [on the Status of Refugees of 1951] we need to protect asylum applicants from economic migrants posing as asylum applicants,” he said. “So we need returns. Even the United Nations High Commission for Refugees agrees with this.”

EU members already have national returns policies based on a “Directive on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally-staying third country nationals” dating to 2008. It was harmonised into Greek law in 2011. But it provides guidelines for national policy, not a standardised policy and procedure across all members.