Asked how such radical solutions could be aligned with EU legislation, Plevris called it “a challenge.”
“For our own society, the flows of illegal immigrants are very large. I cannot say that we can manage it,” he said, adding that on the island of Crete “we have every day 1,000 illegal immigrants who want to reach Greece, and in Libya we have 3 million. This means that we have to find solutions within a European framework, but also within our societies.”
Some 9,000 people from Libya have arrived on Crete since the beginning of the year, almost double the number that landed on the island in the whole of 2024.
Earlier this month the Greek government suspended the processing of asylum applications for those arriving in Greece from North Africa and said it will forcibly return them, without registration, to their country of origin or provenance. The suspension is to last for three months initially.
According to another senior Greek official, neither EU ministers nor the Commission raised any objections regarding the suspension.
During a joint press conference on Tuesday, the European Commission and the Danish presidency of the Council of the EU emphasized that pushing forward a new migration regulation was at the top of their agendas.
