Greece struggling to send refugees back to Turkey under EU deal

Greece will not be able to start sending failed asylum seekers to Turkey from Sunday, the government said, as the country struggles to implement a key deal aimed at halting the mass travel of refugees into Europe.

Under the deal – which is applicable from midnight on Sunday –refugees arriving in Greece will be sent back to Turkey if their asylum claim is rejected. In return, EU countries will resettle thousands of Syrian refugees living in Turkey, as for every Syrian returned, the EU will resettle one from a Turkish refugee camp.

The deal aims to strangle the main route used by migrants travelling to the EU and discourage people smugglers, but it has faced criticism from rights groups and thousands took to the streets of Europe in protest.

However, the implementation of the deal appears to have hit a brick wall as Greek officials are struggling to enforce it. Greece prime minister Alexis Tsipras told his ministers on Saturday afternoon to be ready to begin deporting people on Sunday, as agreed, but officials said afterwards they needed more time to prepare as more personnel are needed for the deal to be implemented.

“The agreement to send back new arrivals on the islands should, according to the text, enter into force on March 20,” the government coordinator for migration policy spokesman Giorgos Kyritsis said.

“But a plan like this cannot be put in place in only 24 hours.”

The process of the ‘turn-backs’, as they are known, will not actually begin for several weeks at least.

“If we had to do it today, we wouldn't be able to do it. There are things that have to be done before we are ready to implement a deal like this,” Giorgos Kyritsis, an official from the Greek government’s crisis management office, told Sky News.

“We are talking days in terms of the legal procedures. We have to make many legislation arrangements and then we have to make the infrastructure and that is a matter of weeks, not months.”

Hundreds of security and legal experts – 2,300 according to Tsipras – are set to arrive in Greece to help enforce the deal, described as “Herculean” by European commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker.

Paris and Berlin have pledged to send 600 police and asylum experts to Greece, according to a joint letter seen by AFP.

But Greek officials said they were still waiting for the extra personnel and without them they would struggle to enforce the new accord.

“We still don’t know how the deal will be implemented in practice,” a police source on the Greek island of Lesbos told AFP.

“Above all, we are waiting for the staff Europe promised to be able to quickly process asylum applications – translators, lawyers, police officers – because we cannot do it alone.”

Realistically, migrants will likely not start being returned to Turkey until 4 April, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key backer of the scheme.

The numbers are daunting: officials said as of Saturday there were 47,500 refugees in Greece, including 8,200 on the islands and 10,500 massed at the Idomeni camp on the Macedonian border.

Under the turn-back deal signed in Brussels on Friday, Turkey agreed to take back all irregular migrants who make the sea crossing to Greece. That includes refugees fleeing war.

To comply with international and EU law, the deal stipulates that each person to arrive in Greece will be given an interview.

If an individual chooses to claim asylum in Greece, and that claim is successful, they can stay in Greece. But if they wanted to travel further to another EU country they would be refused and turned back to Turkey.

Each person will be given the right to appeal the decision.

Amnesty International has called the deal a “historic blow to human rights,” and on Saturday thousands of people marched in London, Athens, Barcelona, Vienna, Amsterdam and several Swiss cities in opposition to it.

In return for cooperation, Turkey won an acceleration of its long-stalled bid for EU membership, a doubling of refugee aid to €6 billion and visa-free travel in Europe’s Schengen passport-free zone.

More than a million people entered Europe last year, many of them fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East and Africa.

Around 4,000 people have drowned crossing the Aegean in flimsy boats, including 400 this year. Those already in Greece said they considered themselves fortunate.