16 February 2016•Update: 18 February 2016
By Vasiliki Mitsiniotou
ATHENS, Greece
Four of five new migrant registration centers are “ready to function and welcome refugees”, said the Greek defense minister Tuesday.
As pressure builds for Greece to better manage the influx of refugees, Panos Kammenos spoke to the press in Athens before departing for a tour of the East Aegean islands, starting with an inauguration of a center on Chios.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the center in Chios – along with the one in Samos - will accommodate 1,000 people for up to two days. Lesvos and Leros can accommodate 800 people.
The immigration center in Kos is still under construction and will be ready “in five days”, Kammenos said, due to the opposition from the local mayor and residents over alleged impact on the tourism industry.
Greek islands have been dealing with the huge refugee influx coming from the Turkish coasts nearby. Last year, more than 850,000 refugees arrived in Greece by sea and Athens is under intense pressure from its EU partners to control the massive influx to Europe.
Greece had promised to prepare the long-delayed centers by Feb. 15. On Monday, European leaders from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia proposed to create a second fence along Macedonia and Bulgaria’s borders with Greece.
"I assume that some EU countries have already taken a decision to close their borders” Kammenos said in a TV interview the same day. “But we have to show Europe that we are ready.”
Kammenos believes that the agreement struck in the previous days allowing NATO to help combat traffickers in the Aegean Sea will help and “the [refugee] flow will be very little."
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met with President of the European Council Donald Tusk on Tuesday morning to discuss the issue.
The European Summit on Feb.18-19 and meetings with Jean-Claude Juncker, Angela Merkel and Ahmet Davutoglu in Brussels will follow.
