The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Greece had been violating migrants’ fundamental rights by subjecting them to “systemic pushbacks” on its borders.
The Tuesday, January 7th ruling is the first time that the “systematic” nature of Greece’s alleged human rights violations has been established in law. The term “pushback” refers to the detention of illegal migrants caught inside the country and their forcible return across borders, without granting them the ability to request asylum.
The specific case the court was looking at involved a Turkish asylum seeker who fled to Greece by crossing the Evros river in 2019 and was subsequently returned (‘pushed back’) to Turkey by Greek authorities. The court ordered Greece to pay €20,000 in compensation, while also ruling that what happened was indicative of a “consistent modus operandi” by Athens both on its land and sea borders.
Greece has been accused of engaging in illegal pushbacks ever since the early 2010s, especially in the northeastern Evros region where Turkey borders Greece, as well as in several islands close to the Anatolian coasts that are often targeted by migrant dinghies due to their proximity.
The illegality of “pushbacks” and the principle of non-refoulement—which states that no one can be returned to a country where they may face inhuman treatment—are often at odds with member states’ legal obligation to protect the EU’s external borders and refuse entry to third-country nationals without proper documentation.
Late last year, the European Commission informally legalized pushbacks in cases where migration is instrumentalized by an outside power in order to destabilize member states. This formality only applies to Russia and Belarus sending Middle Eastern migrants to the borders of Poland and neighboring countries which, in turn, are often also accused by human rights groups of migrant pushbacks, and threatened by NGOs with European Union ‘lawfare.’
Theoretically, Greece could use the same argument and say that Turkey was using migrants in a similar way and Ankara’s failure to prevent illegal crossings was, in fact, intentional. Back in 2020, Turkey did send tens of thousands of migrants to the Greek borders as a tool of diplomatic pressure against the EU, and Athens had been pointing at the incident ever since to justify pushbacks.
Still, leftist lawmakers in Brussels, celebrated the ECHR ruling as a landmark decision which Brussels could use to force Greek authorities to cease the practice.
“Today the ECHR condemns a pushback of a Turkish asylum seeker, and observing ‘ strong indications of a systematic practice of pushbacks’ by Greece,” Dutch Green MEP Tineke Strik wrote on X, formerly Twitter, before asking further repercussions from the EU institutions:
It’s a final call to EU Commission, member states, and Frontex to finally act in order to stop further violations and loss of lives.
However, since just like the Polish Civic Coalition, the Greek ruling party, Nea Demokratia is a core member of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s European People’s Party group, it will likely be let off with a slap on the wrist. While the government already received official condemnation from the European Parliament due to rule-of-law shortcomings in the past, the von der Leyen-led Commission never followed up on these resolutions, except with empty, symbolic threats.
There had been no shortage of condemning human rights reports against Greece specifically for pushbacks in the past either, but PM Mitsotakis famously remained “unapologetic for defending our borders.” Furthermore, Nea Demokratia’s sweeping election victory in 2023 was also due to the government’s tough stance on migration, so it’s unlikely that anything would change after this ruling.
Not that there would be real pressure from Strasbourg or Brussels this time. Defending your borders is only a crime if you belong in the opposition camp, but those in the EU mainstream can do as they please.
