EU to allocate € 276 million for construction of migrant camps in Greece
Migration Commissioner Ylva Johansson came to the island of Lesbos to push the Greek government to speed up the opening of new camps on the islands of Samos, Chios, Kos and Lesbos before next winter (image d 'ilustration).
Manolis Lagoutaris AFP / Archivos
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The European Union will allocate 276 million euros for the construction or renovation of five migrant camps on the Greek islands.
This was announced Monday by European Commissioner Ylva Johansson in Lesvos, who also called on "
Turkey to urgently readmit migrants
" returned from Greece.
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Migration Commissioner Ylva Johansson came to the Aegean island of Lesvos to push the Greek government to speed up the opening of new camps on the islands of Samos, Chios, Kos and Lesbos before next winter and to improve reception conditions for the approximately 14,000 asylum seekers there.
Ylva Johansson also called on Turkey "
to urgently readmit the migrants
" returned from Greece, while the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and that of the European Council, Charles Michel, will travel to Ankara on April 6 to meet President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
.
Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi recalled on Monday that Greece had asked Turkey to readmit 1,450 candidates who had been refused asylum on the Greek islands.
Europeanizing the migration issue
The European Commissioner also underlined on Monday that "
the migration issue should be Europeanized
" and that the countries on the borders of Europe should not be left alone to deal with the management of this crisis, when she found herself facing at the sling of some residents of Lesbos.
Some 300 residents demonstrated when he came to oppose the opening of a new camp, in front of the regional hotel where Ylva Johansson's press conference was taking place, AFP noted.
“
No to structures on the island
”, could one read on a banner deployed before the arrival of the European Commissioner and the Greek Minister for Migration.
Replace Moria Camp
Notis Mitarachi recently announced to AFP that the Samos camp would open before the end of the first half of 2021, the others before December 2021. The government had long promised the construction of a new camp to replace the one in Moria, destroyed in September in a fire, but its construction had encountered opposition from residents and local authorities, tired of the presence of asylum seekers on their island since the 2015 migration crisis.
The new Lesbos camp is planned in the municipality of Pali, half an hour's drive from the capital of Lesbos, Mytilene.
Since the
Moria fire
, some 8,000 migrants are still living in a temporary camp where their living conditions have been extremely difficult this winter.
(With
AFP
)
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