Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday that illegal migrants denied asylum by Greece should be returned to their country of origin, and he urged the European Union to provide a new list of “safe countries” to help speed up returns.
“We’re looking forward with great eagerness to the new list of safe countries of origin, so that our country can move faster in this direction,” Mitsotakis said on his arrival at an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday.
The tightening of Greece’s migration policies comes a day after the newly appointed Migration and Asylum Minister announced the scrapping of a legislative provision that would have extended deadlines granting residence permits to migrants.
Migration is one of the issues on the leaders’ agenda, along with Ukraine and defense.
Greece was at the front-line of a migration crisis in 2015-2016, when more than one million people crossed into its territory by sea, looking to move further north in Europe.
Flows have declined since but illegal migration into the EU remains a hot political topic across Europe, Reuters noted.
