Tuesday, September 8, 2015
The Minister for Migration Policy in the caretaker government Yiannis Mouzalas announced yesterday that a second port will be opening soon on the Aegean island of Lesvos for the transportation of refugees to the Greek mainland, in order to ease the exceptional pressure on the island's port capital Mytilene and deescalate rising tensions.
Lesvos, an island of 85,000 inhabitants, has been struggling to cope with the influx of thousands of refugees and the scale of the crisis. The currently disused port of Sigri will be reopened and prepared so that it becomes operational once again and ships can dock, while shipping companies have been invited by the shipping ministry to submit offers for chartering ships, which will transport migrants and refugees to Athens. The minister added that reception facilities had also been set up on the island of Leros, in order to deal with the problem.
The new government has to deal with the thorny issue of extraordinary migration flows entering the country via the Aegea. More than 230,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece by sea this year, a huge increase compared to the 17,500 for the same period last year. On September 3, Prime Minister Thanou received the Vice-president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans and the Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos to discuss the issue.
The European officials travelled to Kos island, as part of the Commission's visits to several of the Member States most affected by the refugee crisis, to discuss the necessary support measures.
