The EU-Turkey deal has allegedly started to bring results: the flow of refugees and migrants to Greece has dramatically decreased in the last four-five days. It is still unclear though, if this has to do with the bad weather conditions of last week or with the bitter reality that the Balkan Route is de facto closed and will remain closed. At the same time, news coming from Turkey claim that authorities there do their best to prohibit refugees and migrants to reach Greece: the latest report said that “Turkish coastguard hindered 5 boats with a total of 350 migrants from Myanmar” in the far away South-East Asia! But also the presence of the NATO ships has brought results. A month of operation managed to send back four boats to where they came from.
According to Greek coastguard:
247 refugees and migrants arrived in the last 3 days form Turkey
only 17 on Monday morning.
Whether borders closed, whether the Turkish authorities commitment or the NATO presence, it is also clear – and expected – that the whole network of smugglers will not allow anyone to deprived them of estimated 2 billion euro per year in revenues. They seek new routes and ways to bring their loads to Europe. Next country target is Italy.
A research conducted by German Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” shows that the new routes across the Mediterranean Sea bring refugees and migrants from Turkey to Italy. The new smuggling operations are expected to launch beginning of April apparently because the weather conditions will be better and because the new routes require bigger boats than the inflatable ones crossing the short distance between Turkey and the islands in the Eastern Aegean.
“Starting points for smugglers’ fishing boats and small commercial vessels should be the Turkish resort of Antalya and the port of Mersin near the Syrian borders as well as the Greek capital Athens,” FAS notes stressing that the trip would cost 3,000-5,000 euro per person. “Smugglers’ mobile numbers have been posted on Facebook,” the newspaper writes and adds citing smugglers that “some want to offer transfer twice per week, others want to transport up to 200 people per vessel.”
Greek Star TV said this morning that also other routes could be taken into consideration like Turkey – Piraeus – Italy. Or from several areas in Western Greece (Zakynthos, Preveza, Igoumenista) directly to Italy or via Albania.
I suppose the last route would be used by smugglers to transport refugees and migrants trapped in Greece.
At the same time, while the EU-Turkey deal has foreseen that ‘returns to Turkey will start as of 4. April 2016,” no EU-staff has arrived yet, staff that is supposed to assist Greece with asylum procedures, so any new arrival is stuck in the ‘detention centers’ on the island awaiting for the asylum procedures to commence.
PS if Italy becomes the new entrance country, then we’d need another EU Summit to redefine EU’s external borders, and a new EU-Turkey deal to ‘order Turkey to gets back new arrivals from Italy. and so on and so on…
Organised People Smugglers – include
* people on the ground with transport vehicles
* people with … even ships
* people with aircraft
* people who work at immigration
* forgers who provide new ID
* safe houses
* government officials
* border security
& many more .. nothing will stem the flow & now the people of Palestine are leaving for a new life away from the Dangerously Toxic Mess that is now Palestine.
At some point the Palestinians – the next generation & the one after them were going to leave.
Let’s face it – who wants to remain a SLAVE to Isreali’s
In Australia – you cannot imagine the building that is happening – we have a mass over supply of housing – why ?
Who is the Australian government planning, will live in all the new houses & appartments ?
And more & more there are new faces from overseas in the neighborhoods – whare are all these people coming from.
They tell us that we are imagining it.
All I know is that Money Talks.