Greece was supposed to return migrants to Turkey, but has barely started

COMPARED with many Syrian asylum-seekers, Rima is in a rather comfortable situation. A teacher from Aleppo, she lives with her 18-month-old daughter in a central Athens hotel taken over by left-wing activists. Her application to be relocated to another country in the European Union is making progress: she may join her brother’s family in Spain by September. “I was fortunate,” she says. “I was on the boat to Athens on March 20th”—the day the EU’s tough new policy to deport asylum-seekers from the Greek islands back to Turkey took effect.

In April the flow of refugees and migrants into the east Aegean islands—more than 850,000 in total last year—slowed by more than 90%. A few boatloads still arrive most days, but the number of migrants rarely exceeds 100. Turkish co-operation (extended in return for €3 billion ($3.36 billion) of European aid and the promise of visa-free travel for Turks in the EU’s Schengen zone) is “effective right now” says an official from Frontex, the EU’s border agency, which monitors the flows. On the Turkish side, both the people-smugglers and their customers have all but disappeared, he adds.

It is Greece that has upset the EU’s calculus on curbing asylum-seekers. Deportations, dubbed “readmissions”, are lagging far behind schedule. Even with arrivals sharply reduced, about 8,500 people are crammed into overcrowded EU “hotspots”, where refugees and migrants are detained while they are identified and processed according to Brussels regulations.

Fewer than 500 people have been sent back to Turkey since March 20th. Most of the rest have registered as asylum-seekers, in many cases to postpone being summarily returned. Afghans and Moroccans, for example, are considered economic migrants rather than refugees, so their asylum requests are likely to be rejected. But failed asylum-seekers are entitled to appeal, starting a legal process that can take over a year.

Indeed, last week a Greek tribunal upheld the appeal of one of the first Syrian asylum-seekers who had been listed for return to Turkey, blocking his deportation. Greek officials termed it a “landmark” case. EU hardliners fear that if asylum-seekers perceive that they can reach Greece and drag out the deportation process indefinitely, migrant flows will increase again over the summer.

Greek officials insist that the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees must be respected. They say that Turkey does not fully comply with the convention since it is not a safe haven for all refugees. So far those readmitted from Greece have been sent to model camps in Turkey’s province of Thrace, on the European side of the Bosporus. Meanwhile at Turkey’s border with Syria, Turkish soldiers sometimes turn back desperate Syrian refugees fleeing bombed-out towns and villages.

Under the March 20th deal, Syrians returned from Greece will move to the back of the queue for relocation in the EU. Meanwhile officials at the Greek asylum service give priority to Syrian applications; Maria Stavropoulou, its director, points out that many belong to vulnerable groups—women, children and the sick—that are exempt by law from being deported.

The left-wing Syriza government’s policy of taking the moral high ground on asylum-seekers, while admirable, has made things harder for Greek civil servants. They are struggling to provide basic services for the 46,000 migrants who were stranded in Greece when borders were closed in March along the Balkan route to Austria and Germany.

Most live in tent camps run by the Greek army that provide only minimal facilities. A squalid informal camp at Idomeni, on Greece’s shuttered border with Macedonia, hosts 9,000 people still resisting efforts by the migration ministry to move them to official accommodation. Local authorities have been slow to provide the camps with round-the-clock electricity and hot water. Free wi-fi is rarely available; this is essential for asylum-seekers, since officials ask them to make their applications via Skype. Aid agencies are pitching in: the UN is paying for 20,000 people to move into empty apartments and hotels over the next few months.

Activists from Greece’s far-left “solidarity” movement say the official response is too slow. Some have occupied empty buildings around Athens and invited migrants fed up with tent life to move in. At the hotel where Rima and her daughter are staying, volunteers provide food, while the 300 residents, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, share cooking and cleaning. So far the hotel’s owner has left the new residents undisturbed. “The police have shown unusual tolerance until now,” says Andreas, a 20-year-old law student and solidarity activist. But if numbers of refugee arrivals soar this summer, he warns that could change.