According to the latest figures from UNHCR, more than 310,000 people have arrived in Italy and Greece this year alone to seek refuge in the European Union. Italy’s reception services are stretched beyond capacity and the situation is even more serious in Greece, where 200,000 refugees have arrived from Turkey so far this year – a staggering increase from 43,000 in all of 2014. In this CEPS Policy Brief, the authors examine the real issues regarding these arrivals, particularly those arriving from across the Mediterranean, and make concrete recommendations to alleviate the problems that both state authorities and refugees are encountering as a result.
Elspeth Guild is Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels; Cathryn Costello is Andrew W. Mellon Associate Professor in International Human Rights and Refugee Law, at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford; Madeline Garlick is a Guest Researcher at the Centre for Migration Law at Radboud University, Nijmegen; and Violeta Moreno-Lax is a Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London.
