ficient tool for dealing with irregular migration,
“because it focuses on deterrence and readmis-
sion – it does not aim at dealing with the problem,
but only at temporarily fixing it”.
What is the deal with Readmission Protocols?
Why are they ineffective in practice?
In 2002 Greece signed a Readmission Protocol
with Turkey; however, despite the constant pres-
sures put by our country, as well as the EU, on
Turkey, the vast majority of readmission applica-
tions submitted by the Greek authorities, on the
basis of the Protocol’s provisions, is still being
rejected.
Despite the fact that cooperation between the two
countries has improved, Dr. Dimitriadis notes that
“Turkey does not, anyway, accept the return of cit-
izens from third countries it does not share bor-
ders with, and only approves a limited number of
applications. As a result, the number of third
country citizens that have been returned to
Turkey remains low.”
The EU has also signed Readmission
Agreements with Pakistan (1/12/2010), Georgia
(1/3/2011), Hong-Kong, Sri Lanka, Macao,
Albania, Montenegro, FYROM, Serbia, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Russia, Moldova and Ukraine.
As stated by Dr. Dimitriadis “unquestionably, the
only agreement of actual importance that has not
been reached is that with Turkey. Nonetheless, it
has to be noted that, at the same time, Greece
receives irregular inflows mainly from
Afghanistan, Syria (although their status is
humanitarian, and they are not readmitted),
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia; and, as
far as these countries are concerned, readmis-
sion is not always possible, there are not cooper-
ation agreements and, most importantly, the
Trade with Greece
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