Refugee crisis not an issue for petty party squabbling, PM says in ‘Ethnos’
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
Greece was striving to demonstrate and preserve the European values of solidarity and humanity in its management of the refugee crisis, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in statements published by the newspaper “Ethnos” on Sunday, while stressing that this was not an issue that lent itself to petty party squabbling.
“It is a matter of national responsibility,” he emphasised, noting that Greece was implementing decisions taken in Europe by setting up hotspots on five Greek islands and through its handling of the problem that arose at Idomeni, on the borders between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).
“We handled it with a sense of responsibility and respect toward people. We proved that in difficult situations, there are solutions without violence,” he said.
Tsipras stressed, however, that Greece could not be turned into a “warehouse of souls” and had already taken all necessary action on an international level to implement readmission agreements.
“This will be reaffirmed at the summit on Thursday,” he said.
“We are experiencing a global crisis, perhaps one of the greatest movements of human populations after World War II. And this movement passes through our country, our islands, the islands of the Eastern Aegean. We are trying to manage this huge problem with humanity and solidarity, on the basis of international law, without surrendering to the barbarous populism of violence, of fences and of walls that are today being raise in Europe, or the illegal pushbacks at sea,” Tsipras said.
“In the face of this climate of fear that certain extremist circles are making coordinated attempts to cultivate, our country shows the other face of Europe,” the prime minister added.