Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias has called on the European Union to protect the bloc’s external borders in the wake of the crisis in Afghanistan, as some predict a possible wave of migrants.
The Greek foreign minister said during a meeting of his counterparts from across the European Union member states that the bloc needs to prioritise evacuating EU nationals from Afghanistan.
Mr Dendias added that the EU must protect its external border, of which Greece forms a part, and avoid a new humanitarian crisis, newspaper Proto Thema reports.
He added that the EU needed a unified and coordinated approach to migration and that member states must make it clear to countries like Turkey that they would not let them instrumentalise the issue.
Merkel on Biden’s Afghan Fiasco: ‘Everything Seems to Have Been in Vain’, Macron’s Migrant Wave Concernshttps://t.co/Vf8BD3NrZt
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 17, 2021
Dendias is not the first Greek minister recently to highlight concerns of a new migrant crisis following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis stated this week that there cannot be a repeat of the 2015 migrant crisis that saw over a million migrants arrive in Greece between June 2015 and April 2016.
“We are clearly saying that we will not and cannot be the gateway of Europe for the refugees and migrants who could try to come to the European Union,” Mitarakis said and added: “We cannot have millions of people leaving Afghanistan and coming to the European Union… and certainly not through Greece.”
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed concern about a possible wave of migrants following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, calling for a European initiative to protect “against significant irregular migratory flows”.
Afghanistan Fallout Could Lead to Three Million Migrants Trying to Reach Europe https://t.co/ABht283ler
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 11, 2021
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