Something is finally moving in Europe regarding the migration problem is Greece and this despite the coronavirus pandemic. Germany and Luxembourg will take a few dozens of unaccompanied migrant children staying at overcrowded refugee camps, and Austria has pledged to send 181 special containers for the accommodation and health care of migrants and refugees.
Luxembourg has agreed to accept 12 children who are expected to be transferred from the Greek camps in the coming days.
Germany will take 50 children and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer made a relevant proposal to the Cabinet recommending that “the transfer should begin in the next week, if possible.”
The relocation is “being achieved despite the difficult circumstances of the (coronavirus) pandemic and has created a positive example to other European partners, ” Giorgos Koumoutsakos, Alternate Minister of Migration and Asylum said in Athens.
More than 42,000 people currently live in the overcrowded camps on the Greek islands, including about 5,500 unaccompanied minors. Around 10% of them are under 14-years-old, according to police agency Europol.
The European Union said on March 13 that a group of member countries had agreed to take at least 1,600 children who reached Greece traveling without their parents. But restrictions EU member nations adopted to slow the spread of the coronavirus complicated efforts to start putting the deal into effect.
Children moved to Germany will spend their first two weeks in quarantine and then sent to various German states, the German Interior Ministry said.
In addition to Germany and Luxembourg, France, Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Belgium and Bulgaria also said they were prepared to take in children from the Greek camps. However, the “internal challenges” in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, “have caused understandable delays in some countries,” the ministry said.
The Austrian government has pledged to send 181 special containers for the accommodation and health care of migrants and refugees to Greece. The pledge was agreed upon during a video conference between Koumoutsakos and Austria’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer.
The two ministers agreed to immediately proceed with the planned procedures, so that the containers can reach Greece as soon as possible.
