Greek – Turkish border – EU border agency Frontex is on ‘high alert’
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Greece blocked nearly 10,000 “illegal” entries into the European Union from Turkey on Saturday and Sunday morning, a government official has said.
The Greek government announced on Sunday that it will call an extraordinary Government Council for Foreign Affairs and Defence in Athens, amid rising tensions on the country’s border with Turkey.
The meeting started at 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT) and its sole issue will be the border emergency in Evros and the Eastern Aegean Sea.
The statement on Sunday comes a day after 13,000 migrants gathered on the Turkish-Greek border, following Ankara’s announcement that it will no longer stop refugees from crossing into Europe.
“From 06:00 [04:00 UTC] Saturday morning to 06:00 Sunday morning, 9,972 illegal entrances have been averted in the Evros area,” Greek Deputy Defense Minister Alkiviadis Stefanis told local broadcaster Skai.
Stefanis said all were successfully thwarted. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis planned to chair a meeting of the national security council later on Sunday.
Frontex was founded in 2005, shortly after the EU jumped from 15 to 25 members with the accession of the formerly eastern bloc countries the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia as well as Malta and Cyprus.
Its original mandate was to implement the EU’s external border controls and help out member states with joint operations when a task was too big for any one nation. It deploys border guards and sea patrols where necessary, carries out risk management assessment, coordinates repatriation of illegal immigrants and monitors Europe’s external borders for illegal activity.
Frontex who has a rapid reaction pool consists of at least 1500 border guards and other relevant staff from Member States placed at the disposal of the agency, which will be able to deploy them at short notice in Rapid Border Interventions and within the framework of the migration management support teams.
