Germany to send back refugees to Greece

By Furkan Naci Top

ATHENS

Greece's migration minister on Tuesday said Athens would begin to accept a number of refugees sent back from Germany.

"The numbers will be low. We will accept a few hundred people in the coming months," Giannis Mouzalas said, in comments broadcast on a private Greek television channel.

Germany had decided to stop such returns to Greece in 2011 in light of the country's overwhelmed asylum system.

Under the 1990 Dublin Convention, refugees should apply for asylum in the first EU country they arrive in.

Mouzalas said this would be a symbolic move -- a "goodwill gesture" -- for countries which had accepted tens of thousands of refugees from Greece, and argued it was not a reapplication of the Dublin Convention.

The minister also said they had a difficult task of integrating roughly 50,000 refugees seeking asylum in Greece.

Tens of thousands of refugees remain stuck in Greece after Balkan countries shut their borders for refugee crossings last February.