Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis criticized EU companions for not supporting Athens’ efforts to handle migration and mentioned the nation shouldn’t carry the burden alone and be accused of not saving irregular migrants.
Last month, a fishing boat, which is assumed to have been carrying between 500 and 700 passengers, went down in worldwide waters off Greece within the early hours of Wednesday. Just a little over 100 folks have been discovered alive and search efforts have been anticipated to be formally known as off on Friday.
The causes of the shipwreck are nonetheless being investigated. Survivors have mentioned that the ship capsized after a disastrous towing try by the Greek coast guard, which Greece denies.
Mitsotakis, who received an election on June 25, mentioned on Monday that his nation sits on the exterior border of the “very dangerous” Mediterranean crossing, a route migrants and refugees more and more use to enter the EU.
He mentioned the EU’s latest deal on migration was a optimistic step however it was not the one resolution to the problem, which he mentioned was “fundamentally a European problem” and the EU bloc needed to work laborious to provide you with a complete resolution.
“It is very unfair for countries such as Greece … to be burdened with the task of managing this problem or be accused of actually not saving people at sea when this is what our coast guard does every day,” Mitsotakis mentioned from Riga, after assembly his Latvian counterpart.
“We should be placing the blame squarely on the smugglers and those who facilitate them. They are the ones who at the end of the day who are responsible for whatever tragedy takes place in the Mediterranean,” he mentioned.
Greece is among the principal routes into the European Union for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Nearly 1 million refugees and migrants crossed from Türkiye to Greece’s islands in 2015, however inflows have been considerably diminished since an EU-Türkiye pact in March 2016.
Mitsotakis is predicted to satisfy re-elected President Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines of a NATO Summit this week.
Source: www.dailysabah.com