Pregunta parlamentaria sobre la crisis migratoria entre Turquía y Grecia

On 17.08.2020, The New York Times published the article ‘Taking Hard Line, Greece Turns Back Migrants by Abandoning Them at Sea’. It documents how migrants landing on the Greek islands have been forced onto precarious life rafts by Greek authorities on multiple occasions, dropped at the boundary between Turkish and Greek waters, leaving them to drift until rescued by the Turkish authorities. Others have been towed back to the Turkish maritime border and abandoned after disabling their engines, some have been left in an uninhabited island, others expelled without legal recourse across the Evros River.

Is the Commission aware of these events and can confirm that they are taking place?

Considering the reliability of the The New York Times, we consider that the Greek authorities are engaging in unprecedented, extremely aggressive, and systematic pushbacks, and thus contravening European Union law, a shared European responsability, reflected in Article 78 (1 ) TFEU, Article 3 and 4 of the EU Schengen Borders Code, Article 9 of the Asylum Procedures Directive, Article 5 of the Return Directive, Article 18 and 19 (2) the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Thus, is the Commission considering opening an infringement procedure against the Greek Government?