On 7th March the Greek minister for Migration and Asylum was interviewed remotely in Athens by the host of the BBC’s HARDtalk programme Stephen Sackur. The programme series is billed as “In-depth interviews with hard-hitting questions and sensitive topics being covered [with] famous personalities from all walks of life.” As is often the case with such programmes, the main object of the interviewer seems to be to trap the interviewee into a series of damaging admissions, and Stephen Sackur’s introduction set the tone of the interview (the transcripts are taken from the video of the interview uploaded on Mr Mitarachi’s personal YouTube channel, which can be seen here):
“Welcome to Hard Talk, I’m Stephen Sackur. The devastating train crash in Greece which killed 57 people generated a wave of grief – and anger. Many Greeks see the disaster as symptomatic of a failing state, characterised by a lack of investment in public infrastructure and a lack of accountability at the heart of government. Other aspects of public policy are also facing harsh scrutiny, from migration to internal security. My guest is Greek Migration minister Notis Mitarachi. Has his government lost the confidence of the Greek people?”
The first subject to be discussed was the train crash at Tempi, which was not part of Mr Mitarachi’s remit as minister, but on which he was sufficiently well informed to convey the government’s position. Pointing to one of the causes, beyond human error, as the lack of modernisation of Greek railways, he said that the modernisation process had been started with a contract signed in 2014, which was due to be completed by 2016 “but that did not happen”. He noted that the railways had been privatised in 2017; when the current government came to power, he said, they had signed an amendment of the contract to restart the modernisation process with a completion date of 2023. To date, 70 per cent of the modernisation was completed, but “obviously that was not enough”. The host pressed him further:
SS – How do you feel when you see people, Greeks, take to the streets, clashing with police, bearing placards which are pointed at the government saying ” Murderers”?
NM – I mean, genuinely there is a very strong feeling of grief. And that’s not a prerogative of specific groups that are in the street. Everyone in Greek society feels enormously sad for what happened. Now you know ahead of general elections some people will try to take advantage of the anger. A lot of the anger is real and genuine, especially among young people that saw so many of their age group losing their lives at the event. What is important for us now is to move on, ensure – and that will happen in the next few days – there will be an emergency plan for the railways to ensure that the upgrade goes faster and more efficiently.
Moving on to the subject of the wiretapping scandle over which the government has come under fire in recent months, Stephen Sackur referred to “the revelations about cybersurveillance of key public figures going on for, it seems, a very long time, supervised by your intelligence service”, which he suggested have also undermined trust in the government.
Mr Mitarachi was at pains to point out that there were two issues here which are being confused. The first is the legal monitoring of telephone conversations carried out by the government, which is only carried out with a court order, and the second is the use of spyware, which he said is illegal in Greece and which the government does not engage in. When his host persisted in referring to newspaper reports that “a whole list of other politicians including senior members of your own government” were being wiretapped “by your intellience services”, he had this to say:
NM – “We have very vocally said that the government has no relationship whatsoever with the use or ownership of any spyware. Spywares are not the prerogative of government, or of the Greek government for that matter. For what reason somebody would have access to this type of software and would like to listen illegally – because under Greek law it’s illegal to wiretap anyone through the use of spyware – remains to be seen and that’s the subject of a judicial review.”
Mr Mitarachis’s father came from the island of Chios, where the minister has been MP since 2015. As Chios is one of the islands nearest to the Turkish mainland, which took the brunt of the influx of refugees during the migration crisis of 2015, he has a direct knowledge of the problems of managing immigration flows, and no doubt a personal as well as political stake in development of the island. The following is a slightly edited transcript of the remainder of the interview, which deals with the issue.
SS – The government right now has a series of trust and confidence issues with the Greek public and in the context of that you have a very difficult and challenging job that you still must do, which is running Greece’s migration policy. Over the course of the last three years do you think that you’ve got that policy right?
NM – In 2015 we had almost 1 million irregular arrivals, that was 10 per cent of our population. That’s obviously a number that neither Greece nor the European Union can cope with. We have been able to protect our external borders, we still have considerable flows, we haven’t [reduced] the problem to zero. We have 15,000 asylum seekers now in Greece in 33 camps, but in camps with much better living conditions versus the ones we used to see in previous years, and I’m very pleased that in the last 12 months I haven’t seen reports in the global media talking about the condition of the Greek camps.
We don’t have a backlog any more in the asylum service, we’re able to give asylum decisions within a few weeks from arrival, but more importantly we’re starting to invest more in legal pathways. Europe shouldn’t be closed, we need people to come and live in Europe, but we shouldn’t allow the smugglers to select who comes and lives here, for paying a fee. So we are signing bilateral agreements with a number of countries, to provide legal, safe, dignified pathways for people to come and live in Greece.
SS – You described your own migration policy as strict but fair. Now the strictness isn’t in question: the border fences, the new detention camps for migrants, they all speak to toughness, but when it comes to fairness you’ve got a problem, because there are many independent international organisations who continue to accuse Greece of violating international law and international norms in the way you treat migrants attempting to enter your territory. The so-called pushback policy that you’ve implemented is illegal isn’t it?
NM – First of all it is clear that we have denied smugglers a few hundred million euros a year. That’s a big …
SS – Can you just answer my question about violating international law?
NM – … Not at all, the right to protect the borders is in European Regulation 656 of 2014. It is in the European Court of Human Rights’ judgments in the case of … North Macedonia. People don’t have the right to illegally approach the borders. There is no international law that provides for access to territory. You can intercept, that’s absolutely clear in international law and that’s what we do. There have been cases where we’ve been accused of doing more than that, we have had an independent review of such claims, none of them was substantiated.
I can recall the story of this little Maria. You remember, there was a story that also played in the UK media but also in German media, that there was a so-called girl called Maria who died in an island in Evro. It was revealed a few months later that this person never existed, Spiegel had to retract all the articles and all that proved to be a smearing campaign against Greece.
SS – Have you seen the most recent Greek Council for Refugees report that came out on the 2nd March 2023? It says pushbacks of refugees into Turkey are widespread, they involve humiliation, illegal detention, intimidation, physical, sometimes sexual violence and arbitrary confiscation of personal belongings. They cite 11 different incidents in that report. It’s still going on.
NM – I’m still waiting for the Greek Council for Refugees which took us to court for the case of little Maria to apologise and explain to the court why they misled justice by claiming a case that doesn’t exist. And this is the specific NGO…
SS – With respect, minister, if this was only about one individual case perhaps there wouldn’t be such a problem. This is about multiple cases.
NM – No but it’s indicative, Stephen, it’s indicative. That’s why I emphasise it, because it became prime global news for weeks. We have been accused of cruelty, we have been accused of abandoning a 10-year-old girl to die, and this girl never existed. So allow me to be a bit angry with that.
SS – Yes… You’re building new fences along your land border with Turkey and after the terrible, catastrophic earthquake which hit both Turkey and northern Syria it seems you’ve speeded up work on your fortifications. Is that because you are determined to keep out what you think will be a new wave of refugees, particularly from Syria?
NM – First of all the fence in Evro was announced well before the earthquake so they’re not linked at all. Second of all, yes, there is a humanitarian crisis in Turkey. It affects tens of millions of people. Obviously we need to do more in providing humanitarian aid, and if we decide in Europe to relocate people we will participate, but in an orderly relocation. Not just letting whoever pays the smugglers to cross the borders and just arrive in Greece.
For example when the Taliban took over power in Afghanistan Greece was among the first countries in Europe to provide a thousand visas – humanitarian visas for people to come to Greece, and we focussed on female leaders from Afghanistan that were obviously under threat. So we do participate in humanitarian relocation programmes. But as I said we should do that in a European, organised way. We have opened our borders to the Ukrainian displaced people – more than 100,000 people came to Greece. We do participate in each and every initiative that has a humanitarian angle. But we should do that as an organised state.
SS – Minister, am I right in thinking you’re the MP representing the island of Chios, is that right?
NM – That’s correct.
SS – And you’re building one of I believe a total of at least four new migrant detention camps on Chios. They are described by the Oxfam head of office to the EU Evelien van Roemburg in the following way. She says “They are all about barbed wire fences, surveillance cameras, scanning fingerprints at gate entrances.” In essence what she’s describing are glorified prison camps. Is that what you think is right and proper for Chios?
NM – We’ve done five of these camps, three are already operating. The European Union doesn’t share the same view that Oxfam has, but I need to make a clarification here. These camps are only for a few weeks. These are first reception camps. People arriving, we haven’t tested them yet [to see] whether they are part of the Eurodac terrorist database, we don’t know who they are. They’re not in detention, they are allowed to leave the camp as many times in the day as they want, they just need to be there for the night.
So it’s not a prison at all, but it provides a safe environment for families, for unaccompanied minors, for these few weeks that we need in order to determine whether these people are entitled to international protection or not. So this is short-term living accommodation and it should have appropriate living standards. We are the first camps in Europe which meet the new very strict European Union standards for reception facilities, but also a level of safety. Let remind you what happened in Moria, when it was burned down and thank God no-one died that day. So we need to provide that we don’t have similar incidents.
SS – Another aspect of your very strict, some would say hawkish approach to the whole migration issue is the government’s attempt, for example, to take through the courts and indeed prosecute as charged with espionage two dozen humanitarian NGO workers who were trying to improve the lives of migrants who were trying to make it to Greece or had already made it into Greece. These people were put before the court and it was only after an appeals court dismissed the case as being fundamentally flawed that the case was dropped. Were you embarrassed as minister for Migration to see that case go before a court?
NM – Let me be very clear here. If you are an NGO or a humanitarian worker coming to Greece to help people you are extremely welcome. We work with tens and hundreds of NGOs in a lot of the camps, they are residents, they are helping people.
SS – To accuse these people of espionage, minister, seems absurd.
NM – Listen, if you find somebody at the borders with illegal radio equipment and frequencies which are military frequencies …
SS – They’re trying to save lives, minister, these people are trying to save lives.
NM – They are not trying to save lives, they are trying to ensure that smugglers send people through. Some of them could be part of a network and it’s up to the police and the courts to determine who is helping people and who is smuggling people. And calling yourself an NGO, it could be many different things.
It could mean all these well-known organisations whose work we respect so much and we work with them, and it can mean three people who have formed a small “NGO”, and they have colleagues on the opposite side that send boats every day, and they coordinate from the Greek side to tell them where the Coastguard boat is and when the Coastguard vessel pulls [out] then they call and say “Come, start now”. This is called smuggling. Not [just] in Greece, in every European country, every Western country. This is a critical difference and thank God the courts are extremely competent, they are fully independent and they take justice on a case-by-case basis.
SS – That case was thrown out, although as I understand it the individuals involved may face further charges, so it’s not over for them yet. but let’s move on quickly before we finish. I’m very interested to get your reaction to what’s happening here in the United Kingdom.
Of course the UK’s no longer in the European Union but the Prime Minister here, Rishi Sunak, has outlined a new policy in which he says there will be zero tolerance for illegal entrants as he calls them into the United Kingdom. They will never, he says, be allowed to stay in the UK and he’s hoping that a great number of them will be transported to third countries, his particular focus at the moment is Rwanda. Is that the kind of approach that Greece wants to take and do you believe it’s the approach that the European Union as a whole will seek to take?
NM – Obviously I cannot comment on British politics, that would not be appropriate for me, but I can say the following thing. When people in the case of Greece cross through another country, which is a safe country, which is a member of NATO and the Council of Europe, it means that that country can provide for international protection in cases where it’s needed.
SS – Do you mean Turkey, just to be clear with you?
NM – I mean Turkey.
SS – Yes, and just to be clear Turkey has said that it’s longer prepared to sit by the agreement it signed in 2016 and guarantee to take the “returns”, that is the migrants you want to send back to Turkey.
NM – They never said that actually. When Charles Michel and van der Leyen went to see President Erdogan that’s not what he said. I mean we get sometimes conflicting messages from the Turkish authorities. Sometimes they cooperate, sometimes they don’t. But obviously that highlights one critical thing here, Stephen: that we need to coordinate ourselves.
And yes there are a lot of reasons why we need to provide humanitarian support to people in need. And Europe should not be closed, we should not deny asylum to people that need it. But we need to coordinate ourselves – in the European Union we’re still struggling to find an agreement on the new path for migration and asylum. We still suffer, we cannot find a way to provide solidarity among ourselves in the European Union – first reception countries, countries in the centre of Europe. We need to solve these issues and on Thursday at the Council of the European Union I hope we’ll go a step forward in finding a suitable and lasting solution in the European migration pact.
SS – You’re still a very long way from that, aren’t you minister, within the European Union?
NM – We are very far away from an agreement, that’s true, because we don’t have a solidarity mechanism and that’s what’s missing. The heart of the pact is the solidarity mechanism, and the voluntary mechanism we agreed last year – listen to that – it only relocated less than half a per cent of the 2022 arrivals, less than half a percentage point. And that’s a big problem.
SS – We have to end on that rather bleak note. Notis Mitarachi I thank you very much for joining me on HARDtalk. Thank you very much indeed.