The Greek Parliament voted last Friday in favour of suspending the registration of asylum applications by third country nationals arriving in Greece on vessels departing from North Africa for a period of 90 days. The relative provision stipulates that third country nationals will be returned to their countries of origin or departure, without registration. According to the official position of the Greek government, persons disembarking from vessels departing from North Africa will face the dilemma of “prison or return”.
The suspension of asylum in Greece follows a sharp rise in the number of arrivals to the island of Crete of third country nationals having departed from Tobruk. According to UNHCR, 9,753 people arrived in Crete between 1 January and 13 July 2025. While no official data on the nationalities of these arrivals has been made publicly available by Greek authorities, analysis from Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) (and cross-checked against figures from the Hellenic Coast Guard) covering the first half of 2025 indicates that most arrivals originated from Egypt (45%), Sudan (28%), and Bangladesh (19%), with smaller numbers from Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Syria.
A day before the proposition came before the Greek Parliament, the European Home Affairs Commissioner, as well as the Ministers of Interior of Italy, Malta and the Minister of Migration and Asylum of Greece were turned away at Benina Airport of Benghazi as personae non gratae by the Eastern Libyan government. They had arrived in order to hold talks on migration.
The legislative proposition gave rise to a heated public debate and a preliminary vote on constitutionality in Parliament. The Ombudsman, the Plenary of the Bar Associations, and the National Commission on Human Rights expressed concern that suspending the registration of asylum applications would pave the way for violations of international human rights and refugee law, as well as the EU asylum acquis. In a stark move, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights urged members of the Greek Parliament to reject the proposition.
While states retain the sovereign prerogative to manage their borders and address challenges related to irregular arrivals, any measure that effectively prevents individuals on the territory from accessing asylum procedures raises serious questions of compliance with primary and secondary EU law. As argued below, the new Pact on Migration and Asylum foresees calibrated derogations in situations of crisis, but these do not extend to the suspension of registration of asylum applications.
This is the second time Greece decides to suspend asylum applications. The first time was in March 2020, following the events along the Evros border, when thousands of migrants tried to cross the Greek-Turkish land border irregularly. The events prompted the government to accuse Türkiye of instrumentalisation of migration. The President of the Commission at the time backed the Greek government, thanking it for acting as a shield of Europe (using the Greek word ασπίδα). In its later proposal for a Crisis Regulation presented in September 2020, the Commission characterised the Evros incident as an incident of force majeure. There is no judicial pronouncement related to the 2020 asylum suspension, but several cases are pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The Greek Prime Minister underlined last week in Parliament that the recent suspension follows the ‘Evros model’. Still, there are two key differences: the 2020 suspension was a 30-days suspension of asylum processing in respect of all third country nationals, while the current suspension is a 90-days suspension in respect of third country nationals arriving from North Africa in vessels. It is also of note that in 2020 the government opted to clothe the suspension in an Emergency Legislative Act under Article 44 of the Constitution, whereas this time the proposition was tabled before Parliament as a legislative amendment to a law under deliberation at the time.
- The geopolitics of migration and human rights derogations
In the Εxplanatory Memorandum to last week‘s proposition lies a reference to the general derogation clause of Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which allows States to take emergency measures in cases of “war” or other “public emergency threatening the life of the nation”, notwithstanding the absolute nature of rights protected under Articles 3, 4 (1) and 7 of the Convention. The invocation of the derogation clause (through the notification of measures taken to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe) and the power to characterise a situation as an emergency lies in the hands of the States Parties to the Convention, yet the compliance of measures implemented with the Convention is matter of judicial scrutiny by the Strasbourg Court. States have generally been loath to invoke Article 15 ECHR, and the Court has affirmed the existence of a situation of “public emergency threatening the life of the nation” in cases involving terrorism in the context of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland, PKK terrorist attacks in South East Turkey, terrorist attacks in France after 2015 and the 2016 attempted military coup in Turkey.
Leaving aside the convoluted position of the Greek government that the reference to Article 15 ECHR signals the existence of a situation of “public emergency threatening the life of the nation” but does not equal invocation, it is striking that talk about Article 15 ECHR only surfaced in the recent suspension.
In the Explanatory Memorandum to Law 4681/2020, by which Parliament ratified the Evros-related suspension, the suspension was justified on account of the “swift and unforeseeable necessity to counter an asymmetric threat to the order of the State”. References to Article 15 ECHR were nowhere to be found. This is noteworthy considering the geopolitics at play.
In one of the most incisive commentaries to come out on the Evros-related suspension of asylum, Achilles Skordas underlined the need to view migration also through a geopolitical angle. According to Skordas: “The facts surrounding the Greek-Turkish border crisis can be viewed, therefore, under two parallel lenses: as a crisis related to the protection of the external borders of the Union from a guided mass influx with the purpose to enforce a change of EU policies, and as a crisis linked to the Greek-Turkish ‘power struggle’ over the years, which reaches an ‘almost point of no-return’ from time to time.” Indeed, if one were to view the current factual matrix, it would be hard to suggest that it is more geopolitically challenging than Evros. This is not to downplay the migratory pressure associated with the sharp spike of arrivals over the 6 past months to the island of Crete, yet Article-15-parlance in the current context -and lack thereof in the Evros context- makes little sense.
- Habemus Pactum or not?
Another striking aspect of the situation is the disjoint between the suspension of asylum registrations tout court and the content of the new Pact on Migration and Asylum – minutely, heatedly and begrudgingly negotiated among Member States in the Council and between Council and Parliament over the past three years. The Pact entered into force in June 2024 and will enter into application from June 2026 onwards. One of the key proposals by Greece back in 2020, along with Cyprus and Bulgaria, was the need for an “emergency and flexibility clause” to be implemented in times of crisis. The Commission presented its proposal for a Crisis Regulation in September 2020. In the light of the ensuing events on the border between Belarus, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania from August 2021 onwards, the Crisis Regulation eventually came to incorporate “instrumentalisation” of migration in the normative folds of the “crisis situation”. The Crisis Regulation sets forth a host of derogations States may resort to in times of “crisis”, including when a state faces a situation of “instrumentalisation”, but suspending the registration of asylum applications is not one of them. At best, Member States can extend the time necessary for the registration of asylum applications up to 4 weeks from the making of an application, as well as extend the duration of border procedures, while activating the “enhanced” solidarity mechanism as provided under the Crisis Regulation. On a side note, there has been critique against the Pact for dismantling asylum procedures in Europe, but it seems to encompass more guarantees, compared to the options unilaterally resorted to by Member States until now.
- From instrumentalisation to “weaponisation”
Greece is not alone in choosing to suspend asylum procedures in the EU. The Greek move comes on the heels of the legislation passed by Finland and Poland temporarily suspending the registration of asylum applications at the border as a response to instrumentalisation. On 27 March 2025, the Council of Ministers of Poland passed a Regulation implementing asylum-related restrictions for 60 days along the whole border with Belarus, justifying the immediate implementation by the sharp increase in the number of attempts of illegal crossings. On 4 June 2025, the Finnish Parliament voted to extend the application of emergency legislation, allowing border guards to turn away third country nationals at the Finnish border with Russia, thus preventing them from applying for asylum.
Lithuania was first to try her legislative hand in disallowing the registration of asylum applications by irregular migrants on her territory in the event of a declaration of a state of emergency. The legislation was implemented in the wake of the events at the Lithuanian-Byelorussian borders of 2021 amidst European rallying calls against the instrumentalisation of migration.
When the compliance of said Lithuanian legislation with EU acquis came before the CJEU, the Court made two key pronouncements. First, that States cannot generally rely on threats to internal security associated with mass influx of third country nationals, by reference to Article 72 TFEU, for a provision disallowing access to asylum to third country nationals de facto on the territory. And second, that the EU asylum acquis is to be interpreted as precluding legislation of a Member State under which, in the event of a declaration of martial law or state of emergency, illegally staying third country nationals are effectively deprived of access to the asylum procedure.
Despite this ruling, Finland and Poland effectively walked down the same path as Lithuania of barring the registration of asylum applications as a result of instrumentalisation, and so did Greece.
The key to understanding this move may lie in a Communication by the European Commission of December 11, 2024 “on countering hybrid threats from the weaponisation of migration and strengthening security at the EU’s external borders”. In it the Commission speaks of the use by Russia and Belarus of “hybrid warfare tactics, such as the weaponisation of migrants” which constitute a “political tool with the objective of destabilising our societies and undermining the unity of the European Union.” In a key passage of the Communication, the Commission suggests that “in view of the serious nature of the threat … Member States may invoke Treaty provisions to exceptionally and under stringent conditions go further than what is currently provided for by EU secondary legislation, under the control of the Court of Justice.”
The insistence on the use of the language of ‘weaponisation’, after the adoption of the Pact, which speaks of ‘instrumentalisation’, seems to suggest that there is an advanced form of hybrid warfare, occurring on the Eastern external border, which justifies more far-reaching measures than the ones adopted and litigated thus far, including the suspension of asylum processing. In essence, the Commission seems to be signalling towards States a form of tacit, political acceptance of said far-reaching measures, with the risk that such measures may be found incompatible with the acquis in the future by the Court. Whether the reasoning of the Communication around the “existence of hybrid warfare tactics” on the Eastern external border can apply in different contexts, and therefore justify equally far-reaching measures, is a matter of inquiry. Suffice to note that the European Council itself has referred in its conclusions of 17.10.2024 to “hybrid threats” solely in the context of the Eastern external border. To date, possible comparisons between the ‘weaponisation of migration’ by Russia and Belarus on the Eastern front, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing hostilities, and the ‘instrumentalisation’ of migration by Libya seem untenable.
- Where do we go from here?
It has become trite over the past months to speak of a transitional period, during which bastions of the liberal post-World-War-II order are coming under increasing fire or critique. Asylum processing is no exception, as evidenced by the latest edition of the Economist calling on states to ‘scrap the asylum system- and build something better’.
Asylum should not be treated as the source of all migration-related challenges, let alone as their sole remedy. The problem lies in the lack of a comprehensive, effective policy in respect of human mobility in all its guises, as well as equitable development policies.
If one were to peruse the talking points and briefs of European Ministers responsible for migration, one would notice recurring references to concepts such as ‘orderly migration’, ‘the opening of legal pathways’, and ‘labour mobility schemes’. At the same time, one would be hard pressed to find elegies sung in favour of territorial asylum.
Despite this rhetorical convergence towards alternative manners in which to think of human mobility, the latter have been slow to materialise. Resettlement pledges are low compared to the needs, and safe pathways are sporadic, while labour mobility schemes are plagued with bureaucratic hurdles.
What persists in Europe is the focus on a transactional mode of migration governance in Europe built around agreements/memoranda/statements with third Mediterranean States, such as Libya, Türkiye, Morocco, and Albania, despite the slew of litigation before domestic, European and international courts on their human rights consequences. What is more, some of the partners in transactional migration management across the Mediterranean are identified also as the authors of instrumentalisation tactics.
It is high time for European states to think beyond territorial asylum, not with a view to replacing it, but to complementing it with other policies. It is our position that we need to think out of the box, break path dependence and pursue tangible policy change, informed by best practices and fact-driven research. It is with this mission statement in mind that MedMA is engaging in research on legal pathways and humanitarian admissions, community sponsorship schemes, and temporary protection policies. Furthermore, it is high time to make labour partnerships work. And, finally, it is high time to realistically assess what can be achieved in terms of returns for those not entitled to international protection.