Von der Leyen set to cave into Greek asylum busting demands

The European Commission will propose additional migrant-busting policies following pressure from Athens after Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis last month demanded new rules to suspend asylum. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen appears to have complied with Mitsotakis, who belongs to the same centre-right European People’s Party political outfit. On Wednesday (16 September) during her state of the union address to the European Parliament, she announced a so-called European Emergency Response Framework. “It will only be triggered under a strictly defined set of criteria. And in those cases, it will allow for time-limited and strictly defined flexibility in standard procedures,” she told the Strasbourg plenary. Details are scant. And requests to the commission to offer up more insights had gone unanswered when EUobserver went to press. But reading between the lines amid the highly politicised debate over migration following the mass arrival of migrants in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in late July, the prospect of allowing a temporary suspension of asylum looks to be on the cards. Last year Mitsotakis suspended asylum for three months for anyone arriving in Greece from North Africa by sea. “Migrants who enter the country illegally will be arrested and detained,” said Mitsotakis, at the time. The lack of critical response from the EU commission when pressed on the legality of the Greek suspension is also revealing. Immediately following Mitsotakis' announcement, an EU commission spokesperson told EUobserver that Greece was facing "an exceptional situation."