Greece Agrees to More EU Help With Migrants

EU members were pressuring Greece to better monitor the bloc’s external border

The Wall Street Journal

By VALENTINA POP

Updated Dec. 3, 2015 5:03 p.m. ET

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BRUSSELS—Greece appeared to succumb to pressure from other governments as it agreed to accept more European Union help to control migrant flows.

Under pressure from EU governments, including a veiled suggestion that it could be suspended from the Schengen passport-free zone, Greece agreed to three steps to better handle incoming migrants, including assistance from the EU Border Agency, the European Commission said.

The statement late Thursday came ahead of a meeting of interior ministers here Friday that was set to pressure Greece to better monitor the bloc’s external borders.

Greece asked Thursday for EU support to provide items such as tents, generators, beds and first-aid kits to help house migrants temporarily in the country.

The EU’s executive body said Athens also agreed to a plan with the EU border agency Frontex to deploy border guards from other EU countries at its northern frontier with Macedonia to help register migrants seeking to head toward Northern Europe.

In a major concession, Athens also made a formal request to Frontex to help it deal with the situation on Greek islands, where a majority of migrants into the EU now land. The commission said more than 50,000 people have arrived in Greece since Nov. 1, most by sea from Turkey.

Athens is highly sensitive to issues it sees as surrendering sovereignty to other countries given border disagreements with Turkey and a dispute over Macedonia’s name, which is also the name of a region of Greece.

At Friday’s meeting of interior ministers, Greece was expected to face growing pressure to deliver on promises to better monitor the bloc’s external borders and register migrants, including the possibility that it could be temporarily suspended from the EU’s Schengen zone.

The terrorist attacks in Paris last month, which left at least 130 people dead, have put further focus on Europe’s porous borders. Two of the attackers traveled with Syrian passports, entering Europe via the Greek island of Leros, where they were registered.

The attention on Greece comes after EU leaders sealed a deal with neighboring Turkey late last month on cracking down on people smugglers and stemming the migrant influx. Greece is the first Schengen zone country that migrants reach by boat or land from Turkey.

More than 800,000 people have reached Europe via Turkey this year, with most of them continuing their journey unhindered into the Balkan nations in what has become a de facto corridor to Germany and Sweden.

In Brussels, diplomats have for months vented frustration over what they see as Greece’s reluctance to accept EU help in the form of border guards, asylum experts and registration machines. Greece has said that, in some cases, promised EU help hasn't been delivered.

The crisis has raised fears for the future of borderless travel in the 26-country Schengen zone, with several—notably Germany, Austria and Sweden—reintroducing border checks.

A discussion paper prepared for the meeting by the Luxembourg government, seen by The Wall Street Journal, made a veiled reference to a yet-untested procedure by which a country failing to protect the bloc’s external border can be put under increased scrutiny for a few months and, if it fails to secure the border, be temporarily suspended from the Schengen zone.

The procedure floated in the paper refers to the Schengen Border Code, which describes a situation when one country is “seriously neglecting its obligations to control the external border.” That means it would be put under increased scrutiny. If after three months, the situation persisted, other Schengen countries could decide to reintroduce border controls on travelers from that country—a de facto suspension.

An EU program to take in refugees—which should have a total of 160,000 asylum seekers relocated from Italy, Greece and possibly Sweden to other countries—so far has succeeded in moving only 30 people out of Greece to Luxembourg.

The mandatory system was imposed by a majority of EU interior ministers who outvoted Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania.

Hungary said Thursday it was following Slovakia in filing a legal appeal to the European Court of Justice against the decision. The lawsuits have a slim chance of success, since the majority vote decision was legal under EU rules.

—Nektaria Stamouli in Athens and Margit Feher in Budapest contributed to this article.

Write to Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com