Asylum seeker

In 2019, 13 800 asylum seekers applying for international protection in the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU) were considered to be unaccompanied minors, nearly 20% fewer than in 2018 (16 800), continuing the downward trend that started after the peak year 2015 (92 000). In 2019, at the EU level, unaccompanied minors accounted for 7% of all asylum applicants aged less than 18.

Plans to relocate some 2,000 elderly and ailing asylum seekers from overcrowded migrant reception centers on the Aegean islands to facilities on the mainland could face obstacles as some residents and local authority officials oppose the move. 

Ten officers from the Greek Police's headquarters (GADA) in Athens and a police station in Oropos, east Attica, were placed in quarantine on Thursday after it was revealed that they had come into contact with an asylum seeker who tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

A total of 10 asylum seekers were arrested and six more are wanted by Greek authorities in connection with the violence that broke out at a hotspot on the island of Chios on Saturday (April 18).

An asylum seeker living at a Greek refugee facility has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, reports said Monday.

Greek authorities will begin the gradual transfer of 2,380 asylum seekers and their families from island camps to accommodation facilities on the mainland after Orthodox Easter (April 19), the country's Migration Ministry said Thursday.

The move, which will take place over two weeks, aims to reduce the risk of refugees being infected by the coronavirus.

Turkey on April 13 rejected Greece's migration minister's remarks that claimed Ankara violated the March 18 agreement with the EU using the coronavirus epidemic as an excuse.

The Austrian government has agreed to send Greece 181 containers to be used for the accommodation of migrants and refugees and as mobile healthcare facilities, following a request by Athens, according to the ministry of migration on Thursday.

Greece has had to place two camps on lockdown after 21 migrants tested positive for Covid-19.

More than two dozen shelters hosting asylum seekers on the Greek mainland will come under the administrative control of the Migration and Asylum Ministry as part of the effort to improve the operation of these facilities, many of which are currently operating under the authority of international organizations or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

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Yet even in the midst of the pandemic, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned of a crisis of mass migration — despite the fact that the country's frontiers have largely been sealed to migrants and refugees since 2016.