Greece has suspended the treatment of North African asylum applications for three months after an increase in the number of migrants.
Boat arrivals from the region will be arrested and detained, said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
He added that Greece “sent a determination message … to all traffickers and all their potential customers that the money they spend can be completely wasted, because it will be difficult to reach Greece by sea”.
“This emergency situation requires emergency intervention measures.”
Mitsotakis added that the provisions would be based on the same legal reasoning applied in Greece in 2020 to prevent thousands of people from crossing the land border with Turkey.
The draft legislation will be submitted to Parliament on Thursday.
“Clear message: stay where you are, we don’t accept you,” said Minister of Migration Thanos Plevris on X.
The announcement of Mitsotakis follows a considerable increase in the arrivals of migrants to the southern islands of Crete and Gavdos.
More than 2,000 migrants have landed in Crete in recent days and 520 others have been saved off its coast on Wednesday, bringing the total number since the start of 2025 to 9,000.
This was an increase of 350% since last year, said president of the Western Crete Coast Guard Personal Association Vasilis Katsikandarakis. “Immigration is enough for us … Our staff are literally on their knees,” he said.
“The flows are very high,” government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis à Action 24 said on Tuesday, adding that the wave “grew and in progress”.
According to the public diffuser ERT, the authorities in Crete are under significant logistics pressure because the pace and the scale of arrivals continue to exceed the capacity of the available accommodation infrastructure.
Several hundred people had to be temporarily installed in a stifling market room, said local media, adding that among migrants, there are 30 families with young children and infants.
ERT said that the redistribution of migrants in other regions of the country is a particularly slow process because the tourist season means that less buses and ferries are available.
Tuesday, the Greek, Italian and Maltese ministers as well as the EU migration commissioner went to Libya to discuss the sharp increase in migrants.
But they had to go back when the government of national stability (GNS) – an unrecognized government rival of national unity (GNU), prevented them from entering the country, accusing them of having violated Libyan sovereignty.
However, Mitsotakis said that the Greek army was ready to cooperate with the Libyan authorities to prevent the departure of boats from the Libyan coast.
NGOs have repeatedly criticized the attempts of European governments to forge agreements with the Libyan authorities to stem the flow of migrants.
People intercepted by the Libyan coast guard and brought to the ground are often imprisoned in detention camps, where they are subject to inhuman treatment and disastrous conditions.
“Attempts to stop departures at all costs show a complete contempt for the life and dignity of migrants and refugees,” said Amnesty International.
