Greek Govt Minister: Smugglers Do Not Decide Who Can Come to Europe

Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis has stated that his country will protect its borders from illegal migration and that it is not up to people-smugglers to decide who can come into Europe.

Minister Mitarakis made his statements earlier this week, saying Greece would not allow a repeat of the migrant crisis of 2015-16 and allow “hundreds of thousands of people who try to pass through Greece to get to other countries of the European Union.”

“The right of each member state to protect its borders is clear and this means not allowing illegal entries either at land or sea borders, and this is what we do on the Evros [land] border and at sea; this is a given and we will continue to do so,” he said, according to the European Union-funded website InfoMigrants.

“We are not going to become an entry gate again for hundreds of thousands of people who try to pass through Greece to get to other countries of the European Union. There is a great moral dilemma. You cannot allow the smuggling rings to choose who comes to Europe,” he added.

“Europe should be more open, that’s what we believe,” he went on, somewhat equivocally, but added that “smugglers cannot be the ones who make the game and ultimately choose who comes to Europe and that is the great moral dilemma of Europe.”

The statements come after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on a 2014 case involving  11 migrants aboard a boat which sank while being towed by the Greek Coast Guard, killing eight of the people on board.

The ECHR ordered Greece to pay  €330,000 (£279,562/$330,633) to the survivors of the incident after determining Greek authorities had not done enough to investigate the reason the boat sank and supposedly violating articles of the European Convention on Human Rights in their treatment of the migrants.

The statements also come after reports of a surge of new migrant activity along the border that was reported last month, with the Greek Coast Guard claiming that around 40,000 people had tried to cross illegally into Greece.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.