Migrants from Turkey were streaming into Greece over the weekend in an attempt to get into Europe, two days before the EU sends in rapid intervention teams to shore up the border.
Dozens of illegal immigrants crossed the border over the weekend, wading across streams and walking through frozen farmland to reach frontier villages near the town of Orestiada in far northeastern Greece.
Greece, already facing a major financial crisis, has said its facilities are overwhelmed and it cannot cope with the numbers. The border agency Frontex will deploy 175 staff as Rapid Border Intervention Teams in an attempt to stem the flow.
Greece currently accounts for 90 per cent of the EU’s detected illegal border crossings, and has reported 45,000 illegal border crossings in just the first half of 2010, Frontex figures show.
EU sea patrols in the Aegean between Greece and Turkey have prevented much of the flow of migrants to Greek islands near the Turkish coast, and the vast majority now use the northern land border, with most crossing along a 7.5 mile stretch near Orestiada.
Panagiotis Siankouris, mayor of Vyssa, the area with the greatest influx said that between 100 and 300 people cross each day.
Last week, Civil Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis appealed to the Warsaw-based Frontex for help, and the agency will send the teams to the Orestiada area from Tuesday. The deployment is scheduled to last for two months.
“The immigration flow at our borders is very intense,” Mr Papoutsis said. “Alone, our country cannot deal with a phenomenon which is not local, but European. As such it requires European solutions, it requires European co-ordination.”
The Frontex rapid intervention officers, drawn from the EU’s 27 countries, will include experts in false documents, border checks, stolen vehicles and clandestine entry, as well as interviewers, interpreters and dog handlers, the agency said.
via Migrants stream into Greece before EU deployment – Telegraph.
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