Immigration Policy Minister Mouzalas says 25-30 thousand refugees remain permanently in Greece

Between 25,000-30,000 refugees and immigrants, who have applied for asylum and are not subject to relocation will remain permanently in Greece, Minister of Immigration Policy Ioannis Mouzalas said. In an interview with the newspaper “Ta Nea”, Mr. Mouzalas said that three new programmes of integration were in the pipelines, the first one dealing with new registration, qualities, issuing Tax Registration Number and Social Security Number (subject to eligibility), the second concerns the registration of all children in the schools and an English learning programme, while the third is about integration in the work market. Mr. Mouzalas stressed that the agreement between Turkey and the EU had only positive effects, adding that Athens was closely following all developments that could jeopardise the balance in the region. Mr Mouzalas said that until a new agreement had been reached, since the Dublin Accord had effectively been dead, Greece proceeded to demonstrate its willingness to cooperate through the symbolic gesture of accepting a few dozens of “Dublin returns” exclusively from the countries that helped us, accepting up to 17,000 relocations and 7,000 family reunions. He conned by saying the decision of the European Court of Justice against Hungary and Slovakia facilitated the EU and vindicated Greece, as well as European Commissioner for Immigration Policy Dimitris Avramopoulos.