Recent months have seen a small but growing flow of illegal arrivals, mainly Egyptians, from Eastern Libya to Gavdos and southern Crete. Gavdos, due to its small size and few permanent residents, has limited possibilities for managing arrivals. The government is carefully monitoring the developments and is already taking measures to deal with the situation, before it escalates.
According to the Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Mr. Dimitris Kairides, this development has to do with a series of causes. The drastic reduction of flows in the Evros initially transferred the pressure to the Eastern Aegean, as traffickers’ networks are flexible and adapt, each time, to the new realities.
Why are the flows from Egypt increasing?
The reduction of flows in the Eastern Aegean, thanks also to the better cooperation of the Turkish Coast Guard, transfers the pressure, from the east, to the central Mediterranean corridor in Libya. The same is true on the other side: the control of the flows from Tunisia and western Libya that Italy achieved after the very bad summer it experienced is pushing the flows in new directions. Right now the situation is dramatic in the Canary Islands of Spain, off West Africa, where the entire Sahel zone finds its way out.
As far as we are concerned, Eastern Libya, which has been carved out of Tripoli’s government under Khalifa Haftar, has become a very fertile ground for migrant smuggling. At the same time, Egypt is reeling economically from the geostrategic crisis in the Middle East, as it sees its revenues from the Suez Canal and tourism collapse.
This pushes many desperate Egyptians to cross the border into Libya and trust the traffickers’ rings from Tobruk to Gavdos and Crete. As experts tell me, the Coast Guard cannot easily stop any boats without risking the lives of those on board, as the Libyan coast, unlike the Eastern Aegean and the Turkish coast, is more than 200 miles away.
The government’s plan
The government has drawn up a comprehensive plan to deal with the situation, which includes the mandatory return of those not entitled to asylum back to Egypt, consultation with the Egyptian authorities and the conclusion of an EU-Egypt agreement, modeled on similar agreements signed by the European Commission with other African countries.
In this context, the highest officer of EL.AS will be appointed in the next few days. who will assume the new position, established by the famous Kairides amendment, of the National Coordinator of Returns, by a Joint Ministerial Decision of Michalis Chrysochoides and Dimitris Kairides. I am also learning that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will soon go to Egypt.
As noted by Dimitris Kairidis, who knows the international environment very well and always remains informed about international developments, the international system has entered a phase of great instability and turmoil, what many call a permanent crisis.
According to Mr. Kairides, this has to do with the power transition observed in the international system, due to the rise of new powers, such as China and, secondarily, India. The international unrest manifests itself in the proliferation of wars, interstate and civil, which cause large refugee flows, as is happening today in Sudan and Ukraine and more widely in the Sahel and the Middle East. Greece may have done better than other countries, but it is closer than any other European country to the zone of instability that surrounds Europe to its south and east. That is why, despite the successes, constant vigilance and great care is needed.
As much as the Minister, Mr. Kairides, wants 2024 to be “the year of legal immigration” with the six international agreements, such as with India and Armenia, which will soon be signed, as announced by the Prime Minister himself, it seems that the issue of illegal immigration and illegal trafficking will continue to preoccupy the news and Europe as a whole.
#Whats #Gavdo #flows #Egypt #increasing
