MEDITERRANEAN: Frontex Investigating New Migrant Pushback Accusations ― Eight EU countries Call for Situation in Syria to be Reassessed to Enable Refugee Returns ― Albanian PM Rules Out Migration Deals with Other EU Countries While Italian PM Insists Albania ‘Project’ Close to Starting ― El Hiblu 3 Trial to Proceed Despite Plea for Dismissal | European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE)

The EU Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) is investigating two new allegations of migrant pushbacks in the Aegean Sea.
The governments of eight EU member states have issued a joint statement on migration in which they have called for the situation in Syria to be reevaluated in order to enable the voluntary return of Syrian refugees to their home country.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has said that he has no plans to replicate his country’s migration agreement with Italy while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has insisted that the delayed reception centres in Albania would be operational “very soon”.
A court in Malta has ruled that the trial of the “El Hiblu 3” is to go ahead despite campaigners’ calls for the charges to be dismissed.

The EU Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) is investigating two new allegations of migrant pushbacks in the Aegean Sea. According to the German broadcasters NDR and WDR, the first incident took place on 25 January 2024. The broadcasters cited video footage which showed masked men in a small boat belonging to the Greek coastguard using sticks to threaten approximately 30 people in a dinghy while a Frontex-deployed Latvian coastguard ship is nearby. The dinghy was reportedly intercepted by the Turkish coastguard in Turkish waters a few hours later. The second incident took place on 19 February 2024. Again citing video footage, NDR and WDR reported that some of the roughly 30 passengers on an inflatable dinghy had called out to passing vessels for help. Although, one of the nearby ships was flying the Bulgarian coastguard flag and was deployed for Frontex, it did not intervene. An eyewitness later claimed that Greek officials had pushed the dinghy back into Turkish waters. The producers of the ‘Reschke Fernsehen’ programme worked together with the Forensis research agency to reconstruct the two incidents and to demonstrate that they took place in Greek waters. They also presented their research to the Greek coast guard and Frontex. The Greek coast guard stated that their operations were “always carried out in compliance with applicable law” and rejected “all allegations regarding the alleged pushbacks”. Frontex’s executive director, Hans Leijtens, told Reschke Fernsehen that his organisation was a “modern agency” which upheld “European values”. He also stated that Frontex staff members were instructed to rescue people in distress at sea. “They should not sit back and relax just because they think that another country is just doing its own thing” (translated from German).

According to Philenews, the number of irregular migrant arrivals in Cyprus has decreased significantly since the government decided to suspend asylum applications for Syrians. The newspaper reported that there were only 202 arrivals, of which 75 were Syrians, between 1 and 20 May (compared with more than 2000 arrivals January-March). Separately, on 24 May, the Cypriot police announced that 4,491 migrants who had been staying in Cyprus without residence documents had been repatriated to their countries of origin since the beginning of 2024.

On 17 May, the governments of eight EU member states issued a joint statement on migration in which they called for the situation in Syria to be reevaluated in order to enable the voluntary return of Syrian refugees to their home country. The statement, which was adopted by officials from Austria, Czechia, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Malta and Poland during a ministerial summit hosted by the Cypriot government in Nicosia, highlighted the need to consider the “evolved situation” in Syria. “It is indisputable that since the conflict broke out in 2011, and in the following years of harsh military activities, the Syrian population fleeing abroad was rightfully granted international protection in accordance with the applicable rules of international law. However, many dynamics have since then changed and, thirteen years later, while acknowledging that complete political stability has not yet been achieved, the situation in Syria has considerably evolved,” it read. In a statement delivered after the summit, Cypriot Minister of the Interior Constantinos Ioannou said: “After 13 years, the conditions and facts in Syria have changed. It is therefore time, collectively as EU member states, to find appropriate ways to assess the current realities in Syria and, consequently, to redefine our stance”. “Without overlooking the complexity of the situation and the fact that stability in the country has not yet been fully restored, we share the view that we must speed up the procedures for taking all the necessary measures to create conditions that will allow the return of persons to Syria,” he added.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has said that he has no plans to replicate his country’s migration agreement with Italy. In an interview with the Financial Times, Rama said: “It’s a one-off, 100 per cent a one-off”. He also claimed that “other governments” had approached him to see if they could replicate the deal that he signed with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in November 2023 – under which migrants who were intercepted in the Mediterranean on their way to Italy would be accommodated in reception centres in Albania while their asylum applications are processed by Italian officials – but that he had turned them all down. Separately, the Italian Prime Minister has stated that the two reception centres that are due to house the migrants in question would be ready in the near future. Following recent news that the completion of the centres had been delayed, Meloni told RAI “The project in Albania is moving forward, it will be operational very soon”. Responding to criticism from the opposition Democratic Party (PD), she said: “The project will work and will lead the way”. She also claimed that with its agreement with Albania, Italy was “setting the example on immigration” for other EU member states.

A court in Malta has ruled that the trial of the “El Hiblu 3” will go ahead despite campaigners’ calls for the charges to be dismissed. Lawyers for Abdul Kader, Amara Kromah and Abdalla Bari – the three young men who stand accused of hijacking an oil tanker when they were teenagers in March 2019 – had filed a pre-trial submission in which they sought to have the case dropped on the grounds that the incident had taken place off the coast of Tripoli and therefore outside Malta’s jurisdiction. However, during a short preliminary hearing on 30 May in the Valetta criminal court, the judge rejected their request and ruled that the case should go ahead as planned. Following the ruling, the Coalition for the El Hiblu 3 campaign group wrote on X: “The opportunity to finally end the farcical trial of the El Hiblu 3 was missed today at the court of Malta,” adding: “We are appalled that Amara, Kader and Abdalla will remain in legal limbo”. We will continue to stand beside them as they weather this cruel injustice”. The defence has said that it will appeal the judgement.

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