AYS Daily Digest 06/09/21 — Bill Restricting Rescue NGOs Voted into Greek Law
By: Are You Syrious
Tags: Migration, Digest, Migrants, Human Rights, Refugees

AYS Daily Digest 06/09/21 — Bill Restricting Rescue NGOs Voted into Greek Law

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FEATURE — Anti-rescue NGOs bill passes in Greek parliament

Legislation designed to hinder search and rescue NGOs in Greece, which was criticized recently by the Council of Europe (CoE) has now been passed into law by the Greek Parliament, Greek media has reported.

AYS has already written about the legislative package in previous digests (Sep. 1 and Sep. 4–5).

Article 40 of the new Greek Deportations and Return Bill would introduce restrictions and conditions on the activities of civil society organizations in the regions in which the Hellenic Coast Guard holds official authoritiy. Non-observance of these will be subject to heavy sanctions and fines. The law requires NGOs to submit Local Emergency Plans in advance and to agree to follow the orders of local Port authorities or risk paying fines and even prison sentences for rescue operations. It also grants the Greek state the power to retroactively punish organizations that have carried out independent operations, even if they attempted to cooperate with the Coast Guard but were rebuffed.

On Sep. 3, Dunja Mijatović, CoE Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed her grave concern over the proposed legislation:

The Greek parliament should reconsider a legislative proposal currently being discussed, which would seriously hinder the life-saving work carried out at sea by NGOs, and their human rights monitoring capacities in the Aegean[…] I am disappointed to learn that the comments and recommendations made by the national human rights structures and expert NGOs regarding the lack of sufficient human rights safeguards were not taken into consideration by the Greek authorities. I call on members of the Parliament to draw on these recommendations to ensure that the Bill, once adopted, fully reflects Greece’s obligations, including under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention.

Opposition members in the Greek Parliament also spoke out against the legislation.

“It is a bill that continues the impassable, xenophobic and legally slippery path that the government has started down. With more people being condemned to live in grey areas, making them invisible, without rights and obligations, without life, without balance of rights and integration with local communities,” George Psychogiou of SYRIZA said.

Giorgos Kaminis, a former Ombudsman and mayor of Athens, asked if Prime Minister Mitsotakis and his party had “not learned anything from the past?”

“Does anyone think that stricter legislation at the expense of immigrants will solve the problem of illegal immigration in the country?”, he continued.

The current Ombudsman said the bill presents “a serious risk of abusing the deportation return procedures by violating the guarantees of the relevant directive. It must be clear that, especially for asylum seekers, there is an explicit exemption from the provisions of the Returns Directive and that they explicitly have the right to remain in the country until the asylum procedure is completed, without the risk of deportation.”