Over the past few years, the secondary movements of beneficiaries of international protection (BIPs) from Greece have intensified greatly. Since 2020, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees alone has received more than 90,000 asylum applications from individuals who had been already granted protection in Greece. Other EU Member States, such as the Netherlands and Sweden have been also facing increased arrivals of BIPs from Greece, albeit to a much lesser extent.
In line with EU law and under normal circumstances, the asylum applications submitted by BIPs in a second Member State are considered inadmissible. If one receives international protection in Greece, travels to another Member State, and applies for asylum there, then one would simply be requested to go back to Greece. However, over the last years, domestic courts in Germany and the Netherlands repeatedly ruled that eventual returns of BIPs to Greece would put the concerned individuals at risk of being subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment (see, for example, here and here). The reason for this jurisprudence is the reported inability of BIPs to access even basic services in Greece, which often leaves them homeless and destitute. Consequently, the asylum applications of BIPs from Greece were not deemed inadmissible but were examined on the merits by the respective German and Dutch authorities. This resulted mostly in granting protection anew, putting the BIPs on track to permanent settlement in the second Member State.
The unabated secondary movements of BIPs and the very limited number of returns to Greece has expectedly caused growing political tensions. Some governments have even accused Greece of facilitating the onward movements. The German government in particular has repeatedly expressed its discontent with the issue, and has recently strengthened its efforts to send BIPs back to Greece by introducing a new program for ‘voluntary return’. In addition, the German Federal Administrative Court recently gave the green light for removals of BIPs to Greece by ruling – somehow controversially – that able-bodied, healthy, and single young male BIPs could upon their return work in the “shadow economy” to cover their basic needs. Nevertheless, the situation to date remains unchanged. The abovementioned program has only had a negligible impact, while the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum has clarified that Greece would not accept any large-scale returns of BIPs.
Evidently, these secondary movements have far-reaching implications. At the EU level, they undermine one of the main principles of the Common European Asylum System – i.e., asylum applications must be examined by one Member State only – and erode the mutual trust between Member States. At the national level, they result in potentially large expenses for the second Member States, which must provide reception and various services, and examine the new asylum applications. Lastly, at the individual level, they may significantly delay the settlement of the concerned individuals, who may have to wait for the decision of their new application for months or even years.
Despite the multifaceted importance of BIPs’ secondary movements from Greece, research on them remains extremely scarce. As a result, the reasons behind and the consequences of these onward movements remain poorly understood. This is in stark contrast to the multitude of studies that have examined the secondary movements of asylum seekers who travel irregularly between Member States. Unlike asylum seekers though, BIPs receive protection status and travel documents from the Greek authorities. Consequently, they can travel legally, safely, and cheaply to any EU and Schengen Area country, where nothing prevents them from applying for asylum again. No smugglers, no large debts, no dangerous journeys: one can simply take a low-cost flight from Athens to Berlin or Amsterdam, and upon arrival express their desire to seek asylum before the respective authorities.
Because of these differences, attempts to understand BIPs secondary movements by simply applying insights from research on asylum seekers’ onward movements might be misleading. What we need instead is research tailored to the specificities of this increasingly important phenomenon. It is striking indeed that after five years there is still no evidence-based answer to the question what makes tens of thousands of people abandon their refugee status in Greece and move to another country, where they must wait for the new asylum procedure to be completed, with limited rights, limited or no access to the labour market, and most importantly, bearing the risk of seeing their new application ultimately rejected. Therefore, studying and understanding better BIPs’ secondary movements from Greece is not only timely and warranted; it is the only way to design policies that would restore the trust and sincere collaboration between Member States without compromising on the rights of those in need of international protection.