Thursday, March 2: Director of the Diplomatic Office of Prime Minister Tsipras

After a short wait, Mr. Kalpakis arrived and launched into an overview of the refugee crisis from the Greek perspective. He situated the crisis in a longer arc of immigration to Greece which began in the early 1990s, following the fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. That period saw an influx of nearly 1,000,000 immigrants over a twelve year period (1990-2002). In 2015, the sea border became the source of the largest migration inflows, as the land border with Turkey was fenced off and patrolled more aggressively by FRONTEX starting in 2014. Through cooperation with Turkey, the Greek government was able to highlight the problem to the Turkish authorities.

The Syriza government formed the Ministry of Migration in response to the huge migrant inflows. Mr. Kalpadakis noted that at the time of the influx, neither Europe nor the Greek government had the mechanisms in place to address the problem in an orderly and organized manner. Instead, the newly-created Greek Ministry was forced to do capacity building while responding to the crisis in the midst of austerity. From his perspective, the government’s attention was almost completely devoted to negotiations with creditors in order to manage the debt crisis. Another challenge that was highlighted was the fact that the migrants entering Greece came on a specific path, which pressured the same infrastructure on a daily basis.

On the bureaucratic end, the problem of responding to the refugee and migrant crisis was exacerbated by austerity. Examples of this include cuts to the Ministry of Welfare, which could not deploy funds quickly, the Ministry of Public Order, which is responsible for deploying the police, and the Ministry of Defense, which was called upon to fill in gaps. Greece was fortunate that a caretaker government was in power during the peak of the crisis in August and September 2015, as consensus is more easily achieved between political parties under such an arrangement.

In spite of all of these challenges, Mr. Kalpadakis reminded us that the Greek people played a significant role in the response. In addition, unlike other countries in Europe, there has been little evidence of a culture of hatred against migrants in Greece. He credited this to the Greek culture in general, the history of the Greek people as refugees and migrants themselves, and government communication efforts to help prevent a backlash.

His remarks then moved on to challenges facing the Greek government. The challenges he outlined were familiar to us, and included:

• • Completing the EU relocation scheme for asylum applicants

  • Addressing challenges on the Greek islands of arrival

    • Helping native Greeks by not raising taxes

    • Improving conditions in the EU hot spots

  • Examining the asylum applications and appeals in a timely manner

  • Preventing EU funding from shifting away from Greece as new arrivals dwindle

  • Getting the appropriate number of staff from the EU

  • Addressing challenges with unaccompanied minors

  • Absorbing EU funding allocated to Greece

The meeting concluded with students asking questions, to which Mr. Kalpadakis was very responsive. When he did not have an answer, he vowed to find our on our behalf. Overall, it was encouraging to hear that the government was aware of the problems that we had heard described our non-government meetings, and is working to address them. Even though the meeting was arranged somewhat last-minute, everyone was glad that we were able to fit it in.