Interview: Why refugees do not apply for asylum in Greece

The majority of refugees in need of international protection do not wish to apply for asylum in debt-laden Greece but would prefer to move on to other European countries, lawyer Angeliki Serafim told Xinhua in a recent interview here.

Meanwhile, access to the asylum procedure still remains a challenge.

Under EU law, asylum seekers are required to claim asylum in the member state in which they first arrive. If a refugee applies for asylum in Greece and continues his journey to another country, he will be sent back until his application is examined.

"Up until now, we have seen that Greece cannot provide an efficient and fair process to examine the requests as there is no proper accommodation for the refugees and there are slow preliminary examination procedures," said Serafim, who is a member of a group of lawyers defending the rights of migrants and refugees based here.

"Asylum seekers, after having risked their lives crossing land and sea, consider Greece incapable of providing protection and therefore they seek a better life in Northern Europe," she said.

Facing a record influx of refugees and migrants this year, Greece struggles to cope with the thousands of people streaming across its borders. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than 200,000 migrants arrived in Greece in October alone, while many have died trying to make the dangerous journey to Europe by sea.

Upon their arrival to the entry points, instead of applying for asylum, refugees receive a document which permits them to travel legally in Greece.

"With the paper which has duration of 30 days, they are in a status of tolerance inside the state, without risking to be detained or deported. But they have in no case the right to travel in other countries. When they reach the borders, they enter the next countries illegally," she explained.

After a crucial visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Istanbul in October, the European Union is relying on Turkey to try and stem the flow of refugees into Europe in return for financial aid.

For Serafim, the solution does not lie there. "Since everyone knows that there is an illegal path that refugees follow to arrive to their destination, they must turn their eyes there. That, of course, would require transnational agreements ... If there was an official way, no refugee would need to cross the sea with a plastic boat, or risk his life," she stressed.

The request of many NGOs, as well as the official proposal of the UN Refugee Agency, is to have safe and legal passages.

So far, states have treated refugees as possible threats to national security in order to justify closing their borders against the surge of refugees, the expert argued.

"The control of refugee inflow should be made in such a way as to ensure the safety of the refugees and not the country's," Serafim told Xinhua.

Another major issue is that refugees who want to apply for asylum in Greece are faced with needing to provide accurate information in order to be processed by the state.

"Nowadays, where there is a major influx of refugees, the access to the procedure is prevented by misinformation, especially in cases of human trafficking or smuggling, or by the lack of accurate information," she stressed.

Syrians holding valid passports, ID cards, or driving licenses, are channeled into a fast-track examination procedure under which applications are lodged and decisions are issued even within the same day.

If the applicant is granted refugee status, they are entitled to remain in the country for three years, and have access to education, health care, the labor market, and social security. Upon request, they are provided with travel documents to travel abroad.

As Serafim pointed out that during the asylum procedure, identification is another thorny issue. The most reliable method for identification is by collecting biometric data like fingerprints which are recorded in EURODAC, the EU asylum fingerprint database.

This enables authorities to determine whether asylum seekers have already applied for asylum in another EU member state.

But the problem during the identification procedure concerns the personal data provided by the refugee. And that can be tricky especially in cases of unaccompanied children or women victims of human trafficking.

"Greece never had serious detection and tracking process for such cases, let alone under such urgent circumstances," she added. Endit