EU force helps Greece strengthen the border with Turkey

Greece is now being helped by the EU to deal with the tense situation at the border with Turkey. The Frontex border authority has sent another 100 border guards from all over Europe. They are part of the five hundred strong rapid response force that the EU is assisting Greece with since Turkey released its guarding of the EU border.

- The pressure is strong against Greece, which has strengthened its border with Turkey with barbed wire. Most migrants who take over come via the Evros border river, which forms the longest part of the 20 km long border. Migrant boats across the Aegean to the Greek islands are now stopped by the Turkish Coast Guard, said Christoffer Wendick, SVT's European correspondent who recently visited Greece.

Another of the EU's attempts to ease the pressure in Greece is to offer more money to migrants who are in the overcrowded camps on the Greek islands.

A migrant who voluntarily leaves the camps can receive SEK 21,000 - against SEK 4,000 previously. The offer is valid for one month and only those migrants who arrived before 1 January. In the camps, the sanitary conditions are inadequate, and the work of the aid organizations has been hampered by increasingly loud protests from the residents.

According to Doctors Without Borders, 14,000 of the migrants are children. Seven EU countries - Germany, Croatia, Ireland, Finland, France, Luxembourg and Portugal - have offered to welcome 1,600 unaccompanied children from the camps on the Greek islands. Sweden has said no.

- Sweden is one of the EU states that has received the most unaccompanied asylum seekers. It is the Swedish Migration Board that applies the legislation and the government cannot influence how it is applied in individual cases or for a specific category of applicants. The government is looking into whether we can contribute to Greece in any other way, says Migration Minister Morgan Johansson (S) in a comment to SVT News.

- The EU's efforts to offer money and to receive children are a way of facilitating humanitarian but do not solve the major problem of the distribution of asylum seekers within the European Union. A proposal for a common asylum policy is expected to be presented after Easter, says Christoffer Wendick.