Modern Greek Asylum Policy and Practice in the Context of the Relevant European Developments

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Abstract
Immigration in Greece has been going through a period of metamorphosis since the late 1980s, when it became clear that Greece was now a receiving rather than a sending country. The emphasis placed by the Greek state on the prevention of illegal immigration, especially since 1991, has not been matched as yet by a long-term policy development in the areas of immigration and asylum. As an EU member, Greece has been closely following all the legal developments regarding immigration and asylum in the EU. This paper shows that since asylum practice still remains subject to domestic legislation and adjudication by the individual EU states, the slow evolutionary process of the domestic asylum regime has left Greece a peripheral state with a refugee protection network which is still in its infancy. Despite the recent positive legislative developments, Greek asylum practice has shown very serious shortcomings in the legal and social protection of refugees, which clearly attest to the lack of an efficient administrative infrastructure and of a coherent plan of state action for integrated and effective refugee protection. The asylum regime is to be perceived by the Greek state as a crucial, constitutive element of the domestic human rights protection framework that it has just started to develop in the context of its ‘Europeanization’/ modernization process.

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