Greece: EU Shield in its Migration Problem

Over the past ten days, the EU has proved that it has acquired a powerful political leader-Game Changer in dealing with the migration-refugee problem it faces. This Game Changer is the Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis who, with his applied policy, successfully addressed on behalf of Greece and the EU the threats and blackmails of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis showed leadership skills by moving rapidly intelligently in the diplomatic field, while he managed to rally around his policy on the migration problem both Greek society and all leaders of EU member countries as well as the EU leadership itself.\

by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis

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The successful applied policy

This effort by the Prime Minister of Greece was achieved because he managed within a short period of time from the outbreak of the crisis:

1. To immediately denounce Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s methods and threats that he would send a first tranche of 120000 refugees to Europe.

2. To present to the International Community with speed that the Turkish President’s methods constitute a kind of “asymmetric threat” since in the textbooks of NATO and the EU the inciting mass movements of populations are treated as a kind of hybrid war and as a grave threat to the security of the countries to which the flows of refugees and migrants are directed.

3. Be fully justified for the emergency measures of repression and deterrence taken for the non-entry of migrants into Greece and by other measures such as suspending the examination of applications for political asylum for a period of one month and the re-promoting and detaining refugees for illegal entry into Greece and the EU when they enter it illegally.

The results of this successful policy

The results of this policy of the Greek Prime Minister can be summarised in the following:

1. Both the EU’s highest leadership and the respective leaders of the EU member countries saw in the Greek Prime Minister’s policy the political savior in the problems created in their member countries by the migration problem which at its peak in the past it has come to the point of dismantling the entire structure and unity of the EU without ignoring the fact that it was altering the EU’s political charter with the drastic rise of the far right electorate results.

2. The risk of a great deal of social unrest has been removed and as it had occurred in 2015-2016 with the influx of more than one million refugees into the North-East EU through Greece and the Balkan corridor. Since then, high rates of the far right have begun to appear in the EU.

3. The risk of further increase in far-right rates was removed due to the Greek Prime Minister’s robust position to defend in every way the unapproachable Greek border and prevent the increase in migration flows in the societies of EU member countries that would create a problem for the political survival of their current governments.

4. The other Governments of the Mediterranean member countries of the Euro area and the EU, which are also identified as first-time refugee host member countries, have seen for the first time a dynamic precedent of an implemented policy that could well be adopt them in their own countries too without accepting reactions from their societies and earning their governments valuable political capital that could be capitalised on in upcoming elections.

5. Minimise the risk of a repeat of the 2015-2016 migration-refugee crisis in developed northern EU member countries.

6. For the first time, the leaders of the “Visegrad  Group”  (V4-Czech  Republic,  Hungary,  Poland  and  Slovakia) have seen their persistent policies towards Brussels vindicated in this matter, in turn defending the policy of the Greek Prime Minister, who politically Kyriakos Mitsotakis the Prime Minister of Greece himself, and not the ruling party that he is leading is a liberal politician.

7. This fact demonstrates that in the important issues-problems facing the EU do not place ideological and political objections between the leaders, with their permanent aim being consensus at the highest level of the EU.

This was demonstrated by the EU Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers meeting on migration-refugee issues in which Council has disappeared the up to date objections and vivid disagreements, which until then has emerged, leading to a field of agreement as a united family. (This was said in a statement by Swedish Commissioner for Migration Ylva Johansson).

8. The fact that the EU leadership at the top level (Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, Charles Michel, David Sassoli, Andrej Plenkovic) was together with the Greek Prime Minister on Greece’s land border with Turkey, proved that Greece is one of the external borders of the EU.

European Commission President Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen in a statement called Greece a “Shield of Europe” because Greece’s border with Turkey is both the EU’s external border with Turkey.

9. The policy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who dared to threaten the EU, has been absconded and completed failure by saying it would repeat the 2015-2016 crisis by sending hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe. Turkey’s policy of tooling and using migration flows to blackmail Europe has effectively drowned in the Aegean Archipelago and destroyed in the Greek-Turkish land borders.

The right policy that the EU should pursue in addressing the migration-refugee issue.

1. The EU rightly insists on the implementation of the Dublin Convention (or Dublin Regulation No. 604/2013) with member countries designated as first-time refugee host countries without changing this status laid down in the Dublin Regulation.

In this way, the EU guarantees that both Greece and the other EU member countries identified as first-time refugee host member countries will take and implement the best measures to minimise refugee flows across the EU.

2. It is right that EU member countries which are identified as second-time refugee host member countries do not want to accept refugees and migrants on their territories who have gathered in the first-time refugee host member countries of EU.

3. In addition, in order to implement the demands for a fair burden-sharing by the mass relocation of refugees and migrants from the first-time refugee host member countries to the other EU member countries, the flows of refugees and migrants across all the EU’s external borders under consideration should be zero in future.

4. It should be implemented first the announcements on construction and the smooth operation of closed reception centres for refugees and migrants in EU first-time refugee host member countries.

5. The EU will then be able to adopt and implement policies to solve the migration-refugee problem and as presented by our series of analyses entitled «The Solutions to the Migration Problem for the EU-Part I» & «The Solutions to the Migration Problem for the EU-Part II». These proposed policies resolve once and for all the problems of migration in the EU.

The new opportunities for the EU

The EU should demand from Turkey to withdraw its troops from Syria in full. Syria is a lost case for the West (US-EU) since the Bashar al-Assad regime is backed by both Russia and Iran. The development of the civil war in Syria to date proves that the winner of this is the regime of Bashar al Assad. A status which the West can’t change.

So, if Turkey withdraws fully from Syria, the EU and Turkey will be able to demand the repatriation of the around four million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey to return to Syria, concluding an agreement with Syria to protect the specific refugees. In this way, the EU will be able to participate in the reconstruction of Syria by reaping long-term economic and political benefits in this country.

In this case, Turkey is pushing away a hefty humanitarian burden by withholding any infrastructure that has been erected in Turkey from EU-funded for refugees. Only in this case the EU will be able to give further and symbolic funding to Turkey.

As long as the EU gives money to Turkey, which is constantly in need of working out the migration-refugee problem to blackmail EU funding, Turkey will use refugees and maintain an open wound with the its presence in Syria in order to have a permanent pool of refugees from which it will draw on so-called refugee flows which will not actually be refugee flows but migration flows originating from the depths of Asia and Africa and given that Turkey has it abolishes visas for Middle East countries, thereby attracting migration flows from everywhere.

The opportunities that have been appeared for the EU due to the robust policy of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis are unique and given that Turkey’s blackmail policies have been cancelled towards the EU using the migration issue.

In this way, the appropriate framework has been created to develop appropriate initiatives to promote geopolitically the EU in its periphery and in its vital external space such as the Mediterranean Middle East. In this case alone, the European Commission’s plans recently presented by the Geopolitical European Commission to the European Parliament will begin to operate.

Time is coming and the EU should define and formulate its common foreign and defence policy to defend its common external borders so that it can enter as the third global geopolitical pole along with the US and China in the global economic and geopolitical chessboard.