The EU piled more pressure on Greece on Wednesday, telling Athens to improve conditions for refugees so that other overstretched member states can send migrants back there.
Brussels also hit out at European Union members for dragging their heels on easing the refugee burden for Greece and Italy, as just 479 out of a planned 160,000 people have been relocated to other states so far.
And it urged Turkey too to live up to a deal struck last year to crack down on the flow of largely Syrian migrants to Europe, the continent’s biggest migration flow since World War II.
But in its state-of-play report on the migration crisis ahead of an EU summit next week, the European Commission — the 28-nation bloc’s powerful executive — reserved its harshest criticisms for debt-stricken Greece.
The EU’s Dublin regulations on migration say people must apply for asylum in the country where they first land.
But that system has been thrown into chaos by the conditions in Greece and the fact many asylum-seekers do not want to stay there.
A ruling by the EU’s top court in 2011 at the height of Greece’s debt crisis said conditions for asylum-seekers in Greece were degrading, meaning that other countries could not send them back there.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s Coast Guard said on Wednesday it had rescued a Syrian refugee who clung on alone to a sinking boatfor his life after it went down while seeking to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece.
The Coast Guard released dramatic footage of the incident Monday when Syrian refugee Pelen Hussein was picked up by rescuers off the Turkish port of Edremit in the western Baliksehir region.
The pictures showed Hussein, looking exhausted, hypothermic and desperate, clinging on to the bow of the boat as it gradually sank vertically into the water.
The Coast Guard rescue helicopter spotted him and the rescuer winched down into the water. He urged Hussein in English to “jump into the water!” and then they were both winched up to the helicopter.
Pelen Hussein was one of some several dozen refugees who set off in a 10-metre boat. But the boat sank off Edremit, leaving 27 dead including 11 children.
