Investigation: Ioanna Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios – MIIR ,Mohammad Bassiki – SIRAJ, Sofia Turati, Lorenzo Di Stasi
Illustrations: Konstantina Maltepioti 

George Hallack in London for Air Mediterranean’s maiden flight, November 2, 2017. – Source: Air Mediterranean

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, flights were reduced, but other opportunities opened up. Such as the International Organisation for Migration’s (IOM) Assisted Voluntary Returns (AVRR) program, co-financed by EU and national funds. On August 6 2020, the airline undertook the operation of a charter flight that would implement the voluntary return to Iraq of 134 migrants of Iraqi nationality, under the auspices of the Ministry of Μigration. An IOM spokesperson confirmed that the international organisation coordinated the operation and the competitive bidding process, which Air Mediterranean had won. It also added that “this remains the only AVRR flight conducted with that airline”. In 2024, however, the company conducted eight similar voluntary return flights from Italy to Tunisia, in agreement with the Italian Ministry for Internal Affairs. 

According to data collected from Flightradar24, the airline had operated 18 flights between Damascus and Benghazi from May until July 2023, and 52 flights from Benghazi to Athens (but not vice versa) between December 2022-July 2023. 

It remains unclear exactly which passengers it served and how the company could guarantee that it would not carry “individuals who collaborated with the Syrian regime or were on the US sanctions list”, as assured by operations director Marios Samprakos, since it needed the Assad government’s permission to operate in Syria. It also remains unknown what guarantees were in place for the safety of flights in Syrian and Libyan airspace.

Mohamad Majd Deiry (left, in white) on the runway at Damascus International Airport, after the arrival of the Air Mediterranean flight from Athens on June 30, 2025 – Source: Syrian Civil Aviation Authority

Roaming like free birds

Air Mediterranean’s flights to Syria were suspended in October 2023, shortly before the EU sanctions on Al-Daj and his companies came into effect in January 2024. The flights to Damascus resumed a month ago and are currently continuing through another agency, Almera Travel & Tourism. 

Deiry, the FBI fugitive weapons smuggler, is making public appearances in Damascus in the new political and social landscape now taking shape in the country.

The Hallak civil war is still raging. The Red Notice issued for George and Andrew Hallak has not been enforced.

What Greek and European authorities are doing to ensure that the Greek carrier and its partners, as well as other airline companies stay out of illegal activities, and that the safety of passengers is not compromised, remains unclear. 

As for the convicted Mahmoud Al-Daj, little is known about his activities after the fall of the Assad regime, except for a single Facebook post from 31 December 2024. In it, Al-Daj boasts about the arrival of the first ship at the port of Latakia loaded with cars and buses. “A new achievement that embodies our vision and ambition… for the year 2025”, he wrote, an indication of his intention to continue doing business in Syria. He later deleted the post.

His whereabouts remain unknown. 

*This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe. 

It has been published in MIIR (Greece), SIRAJ (Syria), DARAJ (Lebanon), Voxeurop (France) and l’Espresso (Italy). The report was first published in “Efimerida ton Syntakton” newspaper on August 2, 2025.

*Before the publication of this investigation, several requests for reply and clarifications were sent to Air Mediterranean and George and Andreas Hallak, but all remained unanswered. After the investigation was first published in Greece, MIIR and EfSyn received a judicial warning from Air Mediterranean and George and Andreas Hallak, who deny any connection with Mohamad Majd Deiry, reject the accusations of fraud and embezzlement in the Libank affair, and admit to their collaboration with Mahmoud Al-Daj. We will publish these judicial warnings, as well as our response, in the coming days.

**On August 6th, following the initial publication of the investigation, the Hellenic Police sent us data listing arrests made at Athens Eleftherios Venizelos Airport, for illegal entry into the country with the use of forged/altered documents from Arab and African countries of departure during the year 2023,  along with the airlines used to arrive in Greece. The data mentions 8 arrests involving Syria as the country of departure. However, in the table recording these 8 arrests, the airline the arrested passengers flew with from Syria is listed as “Unknown” in 7 of the cases – a designation not found for any other country – while the remaining entry is left blank. We requested clarifications from the Hellenic Police as to why this specific information was omitted, but we have not received a response to date. 

Authors: Janine Louloudi, Kostas Zafeiropoulos, Nikos Morfonios (MIIR)

Data Analysis – Visualizations:  Konstantina Maltepioti 

Illustration: Louiza Karageorgiou

“Mommy, he told me he’s going to cut my throat…”

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy I’m dying!“. Salamina, Friday night, December 1, 2023. 74-year-old Evangelia hears her 43-year-old daughter, Georgia Poutou, on the other end of the phone line, pleading for help. She quickly realises that her daughter has once again been beaten up by her partner. From her home she calls the police to send a patrol car, but her plea falls on deaf ears. 

Finally, she herself rushes to her daughter’s house. When she arrives, she sees Georgia lying outside in the garden of the house, bleeding. The woman cannot walk, her ankle is broken and her knees are badly knocked out. The perpetrator is nowhere to be found. The battered woman, along with her mother and her 15-year-old son – a disabled child – set off for the island’s police station.

The policemen there won’t take a statement: ‘Go to the health centre, bring the doctors’ report and then come back to press charges’, they say. No mobilization takes place to arrest the violent offender, no concern for the victim. 

The next day the physically abused woman herself insists on going to the police, even though her mother discourages her, fearing the worst. “Mommy, he said he’s going to cut my throat”, Georgia replies, as her devastated mother tells MIIR. The same fear pushes Georgia to seek protection. It was not her first savage beating by her 71-year-old partner, who has reportedly been convicted of assaulting another woman in the past – not that this has any restraining effect. 

At the station she finds other police officers who finally take her statement, advising her not to stay in her house and placing the “panic button” app on her phone, so that she can call for help if she needs it. It wasn’t enough.  

Three days later, on the morning of December 5, Georgia falls dead. Her abuser sought her out at her mother’s house where she had taken refuge. He shot her twice with a shotgun through the glass of the front-door, fatally wounding her in the abdomen and chest. The assailant was arrested but it was too late. Georgia was the 12th femicide victim for 2023 in Greece.

Femicides without end in Greece and Europe 

There is no official record of femicide in Greece, and the government insists that there is no reason to make femicide an crime in its own right. This is despite the fact that the number of women murdered or subjected to violence by men remains extremely high in the country. The consolidation of violence against women both in Greece and in Europe is reflected in the cross-border data investigation conducted for a second year by the Mediterranean Institute of Investigative Journalism (MIIR) together with 14 other European journalism organisations in the context of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet). 

For the needs of the investigation and in order to address the pan-European lack of comparable data on violence against women, the participating teams sought and contributed as up-to-date data as possible through requests to the relevant authorities in each country for the period 2014-2023. Data were analysed based on two primary sources: the reports of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE – provided data up to 2018) and EUROSTAT (data up to 2021). EIGE focuses on indicators measuring intimate partner violence, rape and femicide, while Eurostat focuses on intentional homicides, paying particular attention to the victim-offender relationship (partner or family member). It should be noted that EIGE considers this definition of intentional homicide by a partner or relative to be the closest to femicide. In our analysis we only included data that we were confident were consistent with EIGE standards.

By counting femicides based on data analysed to EIGE standards, we estimate at least 4221 victims in Europe between 2012-2022 (comparable data for Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland, Poland and Romania are not available and not all countries have data for every year). 

If anything, the above figure gives evidence of underreporting of femicide by police authorities. This is because Eurostat’s crime statistics show that in Europe, in a total of 27 countries, 14143 intentional homicides of women happened in the same decade (regardless of the perpetrator). Of these, based on available data we analysed (for 19 countries), at least 6806 are intentional homicides of women by current/former partners (4334) and family members (2472). One realises that if there is more diligence in data collection and proper recording of the victim-perpetrator relationship by the police, then the resulting number of femicides could prove to be truly staggering.

According to the most updated figures we received from the Hellenic Police, the number of female victims of intentional homicides by male partners in 2024 was already 5 until February 29th. 

Based on the most recently released femicide data for 2022 (EIGE standards), Greece saw a 4.3% increase compared to 2021, from 23 to 24 victims, confirming that at least 2 women per month died at the hands of a partner and/or someone in their domestic environment. Germany also showed a significant increase (22%). France and Italy had a decrease of 3.3% and 12.9% respectively compared to 2021, but still have a significantly high number of female victims of femicide (118 and 61 victims respectively in 2022). On the other hand, Slovakia and Cyprus – which remains the only EU country where femicide is recognised as a specific crime as of 2022 – saw a large decrease 50% and 60% respectively.  

In terms of the highest increases for the decade 2012 to 2022, data analysed by EIGE standards show that Greece had the highest increase in femicides in 2021 with an increase of 155.6% to 23 femicides compared to 9 in 2020 (note: in last year’s report the number of victims for 2020 was estimated as 8 by police). The second highest number is in Sweden, which saw a 120% increase in 2018 (22 femicides) compared to 2017 (10), followed by Slovakia, which saw a 66.7% increase in 2020, and Croatia with 28.6% compared to 2019.

Based on newly available data for 2021, the European average number for femicides by intimate partners (EIGE) per 100.000 women (based on the 10 countries that provided data) is 0.39, a figure that corresponds to almost 4 women per million. Based on Eurostat, the average number of intentional female homicides by an intimate partner in 2021 for the exact same countries as EIGE is 2.4 per 100.000 women, a number that is lower than the official data we collected from national authorities for these countries, which could be indicative of how femicides are not correctly reported to Eurostat.

Unofficial sources are better at monitoring

For the purposes of the investigation the participating teams also collected data from unofficial sources, such as local monitoring groups for the recording of femicides. Such organizations mostly monitor media coverage with the aim of countering the underreporting of violence against women. This choice was made in order to compare the official number of femicides with the unofficial one.

This method also allows us to gain insight into countries such as Belgium that does not have any recent data in the Eurostat or Eige databases. However non-official sources estimate 101 femicides took place from 2020 to 2023 (source: “Stop Feminicide Belgie”). Significantly higher numbers of femicides compared to official sources are estimated for recent years by non-official sources in Italy, France and Spain.

Violence of all forms against women in Greece is on the rise

Femicides are often the last and irreversible stage in a process of escalating violence from the perpetrators to the victim, as the recent case in Salamina has proved. For the data investigation we analysed other indicators relating to physical, psychological, economic and sexual violence in order to highlight the variation in the number of women victims of each form of violence in recent years across Europe.

In terms of physical and sexual violence, in Greece the pandemic period was characterized by a frightening increase (110.2%) in victims of physical violence in 2020 (3609 women) and 70.9% in 2021 (6166 women), while victims of sexual violence had increased in the same two-year period from 69 to 147. The evolution of the phenomenon is even more disheartening for 2022, where a 20.5% increase in physical violence was recorded with 7430 victims, and an explosion in sexual violence (268.7%) with 542 female victims. 

In contrast, Cyprus -in the year when it legally ratified femicide- saw a 9% decrease in physical violence incidents with 1752 victims in 2022 from 1925 in 2021, when it had seen a 78.9% increase in physical violence incidents compared to 2020 (1076 victims).

“Data-collection systems across the EU member States remain very heterogeneous, as they are grounded in national crime statistics or other administrative data sources on homicide (from the judiciary or health system) or from non-governmental organisations’ media analysis. Therefore, data is not comparable, making measurement across member states currently not possible”, explains Cristina Fabre Rosell who works as Gender-based Violence Team Leader at the European Institute for Gender Equality, adding that gender-based violent crimes remain under-reported. This makes tackling violence against women and developing policies that reinforce gender equality problematic. The Gender Equality Index for 2023 is indicative of this, as countries such as Greece, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania that are at the bottom of the list, do seem to have problems in addressing violence against women.

When it comes to economic violence against women in Europe (this is the suffocating financial control or financial bleeding that a man may exert towards his current or former partner), based on available data (2019-2022), four countries show decreases in victims: Serbia, Germany, Croatia and Slovakia. Greece had no data available at all before 2021, but in 2022, 1626 women victims of economic violence were recorded for the first time in our country.

Moreover, as revealed by the investigation, there is a remarkable Europe-wide increase in the appeal for help from victims of domestic violence or third parties to national support lines, such as the “SOS 15900 Line” in Greece. For 2022, the largest increases are found in Spain (21.51%), Greece (17.28%) and Ireland (19.66%). However, in 2023 in Greece, unlike other countries, a decrease (-21.62%) was observed (-21.62%), without knowing whether this is related to fewer incidents of violence or a tendency to avoid calling for help on the part of women. 

The area that most reveals the plight of women in Europe, and the one that causes the greatest political tension, is that of rape.  

In Greece, rapes increased by 34.1% in 2022 (from 226 to 303 women) and 79.4% in 2021. Police data for 2023 indicates towards a consolidation of the high number of victims (294 women).  

Spain recorded a significant increase in rapes in 2022 (140.7%), while the Czech Republic had a large increase in both years (25.9% in 2021, 11.1% in 2022). Slovakia (7.5%), Croatia (11.3%), Cyprus (5.6%), Ireland (3.2%) and Romania (2%) also recorded an increase in rapes in 2022. 

Apart from the extent of the phenomenon, we also analysed the evolution in the penal treatment of perpetrators of rape and sexual assault over time.

Rape as a field of confrontation

The issue of rape has significantly divided the European Union, as shown by the recent negotiations to reach an agreement across member states on the new EU Directive on combatting violence against women and domestic violence, initially proposed two years ago.

On February 6, a provisional agreement was finally reached between the European Parliament and Council on EU-wide rules to combat gender-based violence and protect its victims, especially women and victims of domestic violence. It includes minimum standard rules on the protection of women victims of violence, criminalisation of certain forms of gender-based violence, tougher rules on cyber violence, better access to justice, protection and prevention, as well as establishing enhanced reporting and evidence gathering by authorities.

However, the adoption of a controversial article on rape (Article 5), which would have made any sexual act without consent a criminal offence, was not achieved.

Patriarchy

“Firstly, it is a directive covering many criminal law aspects so negotiations took more time. Secondly working on women’s rights is always difficult because of patriarchal structures that are still guiding our societies unfortunately. The main obstacle was to get consent based rape legislation included which we did not manage to get in the end. There was a lot of resistance from several member states to this even though rape is the most widespread and serious form of gender based violence”, explains Swedish MEP Evin Incir (S&D), who is the European Parliament’s co-chief rapporteur on gender-based violence in the committee on civil liberties (LIBE).

In an interview with MIIR, MEP Incir added that “the concept of ‘rape’ is highly debated due to deep-rooted patriarchal norms in society. It’s challenging to reach an agreement that defines sex without consent as rape, as outlined in the Istanbul Convention. However, we’re optimistic that our recent negotiation success in including a provision on preventing rape based on lack of consent, will prompt a shift in societal attitudes across Europe. This, in turn, could generate the necessary pressure for national governments to update their legal definitions to align with international human rights standards, such as those set forth in the Istanbul Convention. Looking ahead, we anticipate the European Commission to propose new legislation specifically addressing rape, building upon this progress”.

The far right (also) threatens women

MEP Incir explains that the significance of the Directive “is further underscored by the looming threat of a right-wing surge in the EU, emphasizing the imperative for such protective measures. While it may not meet all our aspirations, this directive sets a foundational standard and serves as a starting point for progress, reinforcing the commitment to never regress on these critical advancements”.

This concern about the changing political and social environment in Europe in relation to the increase in violence against women is also expressed by Cristina Fabre Rosell, EIGE’s Gender-based Violence Team Leader, who told MIIR that “Two years after the Covid pandemic we don’t know if it’s still because of it, or because extreme forms of violence against women have increased due to different causes that are also related to the increase of the far right movements and the anti-gender narrative. We need to do more research on this, for me rape is a burning form of violence that demands our attentionFirst and foremost we must work towards better prevention”.

The missed opportunity in Greece

The Directive is expected to be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council and then,  in the near future, enter into force. Member states will then have three years to implement it. In Greece an attempt to regulate prevention and combatting domestic violence against women came with the recent bill of the Ministry of Justice, which was voted in parliament with rapid procedures, focusing on the tightening of penalties for domestic violence. 

Significant organisations and collectives (European Anti-Violence Network, Diotima Centre, Mov, etc.) denounced the fact that their comments in the consultation process before the bill was passed were not taken into account. Most importantly, they denounced the introduction of amendments to the draft law which did not take into account the urgent recommendations of the GREVIO Committee (the independent authority monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention) to the Greek government, as reflected in the first evaluation report delivered to the Greek authorities last November.

Among GREVIO’s recommendations is the need for the Greek authorities to:

• Significantly strengthen the coordination of the response to the needs of women victims of all forms of violence.
• Support and further develop the network of specialised support services and adequately address the needs of all women victims of all forms of violence. 
• Expand the number and capacity of shelters for women victims of violence throughout the country – currently there are only 20 shelters for women victims of violence, with a total capacity of around 450 individual beds.
• Ensure that accommodation is available to women in emergency situations.
• Ensure that women victims of violence have adequate access to social services that meet their needs and facilitate their recovery from violence.
• Move forward with the establishment of rape crisis centres and/or sexual violence referral centres that provide immediate medical care, trauma support, forensic examinations and immediate, short- and long-term psychological support.

Dr Kiki Petroulaki, psychologist and chair of the Board of the European Ant-Violence Network, explains that apart from the significant gaps in the protection of victims of abuse, the bill does not clarify the concept of consent in the definition of Rape, and it does not state that any sexual act or behaviour must be the product of free will. Thus lewd acts may be tried as misdemeanors. 

There is also no provision in the new law for speeding up procedures and to prioritise trials for domestic violence incidents, although since November 2021, a circular issued by the Supreme Court prosecutor, Vasilis Pliotas, called on prosecutors to intervene imminently, to further the process of arresting the presumed perpetrators of such crimes and for the related criminal cases to be heard as a matter of priority in court, so as to avoid all delays in delivering justice. In fact, the circular explicitly mentioned the term “femicide” – the first time a senior prosecutor had made an argument for the legal adoption of the term in Greece – and also called for victims of domestic violence to be supported when reporting violent behaviour against them.

Impunity

For the needs of the data investigation we tried to estimate the proportion of male offenders who are prosecuted for violence against women and end up in prison. 

Based on our analysis, Greece has an extremely low and disproportionate conviction rate for domestic violence perpetrators compared to the number of prosecutions. In 2017 the conviction rate was 2.9%, in 2018 it was 2% and in 2019 it was 1.9%. In 2021 the rate increased to 3.2%. This means that just 3 in 100 men who are criminally prosecuted, are then convicted to imprisonment. The Greek authorities did not offer data for 2022.

It is worth noting that the absolute figures may not fully reflect the situation in the reference year and that there may be anomalies in the data. For example, the registration of an offender in 2020 does not mean that the offense was committed in 2020, and similarly the imprisonment of an offender in 2020 does not mean that he committed the offense in the same year. For this reason, these rates are a relative estimate of the relationship between prosecutions and imprisonment of perpetrators of crimes of violence against women, recorded in a given time period, and should be interpreted as an indicator of a trend.

“I don’t think that manifestations of violence against women should be misdemeanours. Criminalisation is a way of dealing with violence. But criminalisation without prevention doesn’t work. We can’t rely on tightening penalties without prevention measures. This can have the opposite effect, such as increasing hatred against women. This is not the way to change attitudes, we see it with femicide, where harsh penalties do not prevent men from killing women”, says EIGE’s Cristina Fabre Rosell,  adding that member states need to invest in cross-sectoral cooperation between competent authorities.

Secondary victimisation 

Τhe communication gap between the relevant agencies, according to Dr Petroulaki, leaves women completely unprotected and vulnerable to secondary victimisation in a lengthy criminal procedure, which, she points out, is not monitored over time in its entirety. “Even if a restraining order has been granted, who monitors its implementation and what happens if it is violated? No one and nothing”, she states. This in turn exacerbates the feeling of impunity among perpetrators, who repeat and escalate the pattern of violence and, as the data shows, even go as far as femicide. 

This is the same impunity that armed the hand of the murderer of 43-year-old Georgia last December in Salamina. 

One of the last photos posted by Georgia Poutou on Facebook 6 days before the murder

Research – Text: Janine Louloudi, Maria Álvarez Del Vayo, Lucas Laursen, Ter García, Carmen Torrecillas, Adrian Maqueda
Data analysis – Illustrations: Civio 

At the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, the new occupant of the ministerial office presented his credentials a week ago. And it was exactly what anyone familiar with Makis Voridis’ path in the far-right, would expect. Appearing at the House Committee on Public Administration, Public Order and Justice (19/3), he was quick to announce that he personally made the decision to withdraw the provision of a bill that extended until the end of September the deadline for submitting applications for legalization of immigrants who have lived in Greece for more than three years and have found an employer (Article 205, para. 2) – a procedure that had been proposed by his predecessor Dimitris Kairidis, in an attempt to meet the pressing need for a workforce. He then announced that any further decision “should be linked to more restrictive policies to deal with illegal immigration from now on”. A few days later (27/3) during a visit to the ministry, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis would additionally state that legal immigration to Greece “must meet established labour market needs”.

Residence permits, initially temporary and then long-term, are the basic “paper” for proving legal residence in the country and the first step in the long process towards acquiring Greek citizenship for those foreigners who do not possess significant athletic or other qualifications to “offer exceptional services or serve an exceptional interest in the country” (Article 13 of the Code of Greek Citizenship), in order to receive honorary naturalization. Such naturalizations vary considerably, are usually quick and depend only on the political will of the government.

A very characteristic example is that of athletes who were naturalized in order to wear the colours of the Hellenic National Team, such as for example the Olympiakos basketball player Thomas Walkup, who received Greek citizenship in 2023 and participated with the Greek team in the 2024 Olympics. At least 25 athletes competed in Paris having received citizenship by decree of a European country, including Ekaterina Antropova, a Russian volleyball player naturalized by Italy in 2023, and Russian wrestler Dauren Kurugliev who gave Greece a silver medal.

However for people like Natalia, who has been living in Greece for the last 28 years, acquiring citizenship still seems like an elusive dream. She and her husband left Moldova in 1997, when the country was in a severe economic crisis, leaving behind two children. They both worked hard – she as a cleaner and housekeeper, her husband as a handyman –  and managed to bring over and raise their daughters here. The years went by, constantly renewing their residence permits, until in 2014 Natalia heard her daughters say, “Mom, we have our friends here, our studies here, we’re not going back.” It was around the time when the girls went to university, obtained Greek citizenship and encouraged her to apply for Greek citizenship.

“Citizenship unlocks the rights that individuals should have as full members in a state,” says migration researcher Jelena Dzankic, co-director of the Global Citizenship Observatory and a part-time professor at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy.

However, European countries only naturalise a small proportion of their foreign residents each year. According to the latest available figures, in 2022 the European Union, with a population of 448.4 million people, had naturalised less than 1 million people. In total, European countries host 41.2 million foreigners. Sweden naturalised the most in relation to its total population, followed by the Netherlands and Italy. Austria, Estonia and Latvia, on the other hand, naturalised the smallest proportion. Most citizenship decisions in European countries in 2022 concerned immigrants from Morocco, Syria and Albania.

The prohibitive terms

Among the factors influencing naturalisation rates, the terms requested by states for people to obtain citizenship play an important role. Firstly, the documentation of the total number of years of legal residence, ranging up to 10 years in Spain, Austria and Italy and 7 years in Greece.

At the same time, additional integration terms, such as certain years of work, language and cultural examinations, documents from the applicants’ countries of origin, are also required, which can act as barriers to entry. Persons applying for naturalisation through other channels, such as refugees or spouses of citizens, face similar requirements. There are also work or income requirements. In more than a dozen European countries, one of the requirements for citizenship is a stable source of income.

After a long wait, Natalia took her exams in 2023 to obtain Greek citizenship, spending money on the necessary documents and hours of endless studying without help. She managed to pass the exams, but her application was rejected as, working as a cleaner, she did not meet the minimum required annual income of 8,450 euros for the relevant period between 2014-2019. “I have been here legally since 1997 and all these years I have been living somehow, right? But not with what was required”, she explains to MIIR in frustration.

It took nine years from Natalia’s initial application to the announcement of the final decision on her citizenship. The corresponding time in Spain and Italy can be as long as ten years, while in Greece it is six years, although the law stipulates that the administration has 12 months to examine applications for naturalisation. There are currently more than 30,000 pending applications in our country.

Natalia, however, decided not to take the exam again, as she is now 61 years old and does not think she will ever be able to meet the income threshold. She will simply try to renew her residence permit, a process that the NGO Generation 2.0 Red estimates may take at least two years. That’s because in 2024, pending residence permit applications for third-country nationals reached 280,474, with about 32,650 new applications added in one year, from November 2023 to November 2024.

As Generation 2.0 Red reports in its latest report on Monitoring Administrative Procedures for Obtaining Citizenship (Report #2, May 2024 – August 2024)), “a key and insurmountable barrier for most applicants is the requirement to prove minimum income, which leads to many application denials. Acquiring citizenship for people who have lived in the country for years and have developed strong ties with it, should not depend on economic factors”.

In Greece in 2023, 4,931 decisions for naturalisation of migrants were issued (latest available data from the General Secretariat for Citizenship), of which 3,515 (71.28%) were positive. The majority of them (73.88%) concerned immigrants from Albania. However, three out of ten applications (1,416 in number) for citizenship were rejected.

Strangers in their own land

There are also thousands of pending citizenship applications in Greece in the case of second-generation immigrants, reaching 18,822 at the end of March 2022 (latest available data), with delays in the processing of applications exceeding four years.

In this case, citizenship is granted, at the request of the parents, either to minor children born in the country and enrolled in the first grade of primary school (strict conditions apply regarding the status and years of residence of their parents in the country), or to minor children who have completed nine grades of primary and secondary education in a Greek school or six grades of secondary education or have a high school diploma and a higher education degree. 

In 2023 the acceptance rate of second generation citizenship applications was 97.3% (7,514 positive decisions), in 2022 98.38% (6,867) and in 2021 97.03% (5,154).

In 2022, Italy and Spain were the two European countries with the highest total number of naturalisations (213,716 and 181,581 respectively) according to Eurostat. However, almost a third of these involve people born there. The proportion is similar in Austria (32.69%), but higher in Greece (53.93%), where more than half of the 12,733 people granted citizenship were born here.

The laws of EU member states tend to favour citizenship by descent (jus sanguinis) rather than by place of birth (jus soli), but several countries allow people born there to become citizens regardless of their parents’ nationality in special cases.

Five countries automatically grant citizenship to people born there to foreign parents who meet certain conditions, according to the Global Citizenship Observatory (Globalcit). Portugal offers citizenship to children born there whose foreign parents have lived there for a year. Ireland does so after three years. Germany does it after five years, from June 2024, while Luxembourg and France automatically grant citizenship to people born there who can prove they have lived in the country for 5 years when they turn 18. In France, more than a quarter of the approximately 114,500 naturalizations in 2022 involved children aged 13 to 17 whose parents filed an application for their naturalisation, despite the provision for automatic citizenship at age 18.

In contrast, fifteen other EU countries do not allow the automatic naturalisation of children born there to foreign parents, but offer simplified procedures, such as reducing the time required for prior legal residence. There is no common rule: while in Spain, parents of children born in the country can apply for their child’s citizenship after one year of legal residence, in Italy they cannot apply until the child turns 18. Sweden requires three years of residence, not only for children born there, but for all minors residing in the country, regardless of their place of birth.

In all these countries, the first barrier to naturalisation is the acquisition of legal residence. “When children are born to parents who are in an irregular situation, they are also in an irregular situation,” explains Diego Fernández-Maldonado, a migration lawyer for the civil society organisation Caritas in Madrid, Spain. Economist Christina Gathmann of the Luxembourg Institute for Socio-Economic Research, calls it a “missed opportunity” that most countries do not recognise birthright citizenship for children of foreign parents: “Europe is falling behind or not thinking about the benefits, because very few countries in Europe have birthright citizenship.”

Stateless and deprived of rights

There is another category of people that nobody talks about. It concerns at least 381,000 foreigners, according to UNHCR figures, living in the EU without official citizenship, a situation that forces them to live as invisible people without basic rights.

Many stateless people come from states that have disappeared or may have been displaced by war or for other reasons. Others have no nationality, because of gaps in the laws of their country of birth: they may be the children of stateless persons or of people whose countries do not recognise as citizens the children born to their citizens abroad. Some people are stateless because the country where they live does not recognise their country of origin as a state, as in much of the European Union (EU) for people from Palestine or Western Sahara.

In Sweden the number of recognised stateless persons increased from 5,300 in 2005, the first year with available data, to 42,511 in 2022. In Greece, the number of stateless persons reached 4,488 in 2022, exactly the same as in 2021.

Since the middle of the last century, two UN conventions have aimed to guarantee minimum rights for stateless persons. First, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, which defines which people fall into this category and requires signatory countries to provide them with access to basic rights that are at least the same as those enjoyed by legally resident foreigners. 

Then there is the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which limits the requirements that stateless persons must meet to obtain a nationality. However, France, Greece and Slovenia have not yet ratified the 1961 Convention, and Cyprus, Estonia and Poland have not even acceded to the 1954 Convention, according to the latest report on statelessness by the European Migration Network (EMN), an EU-funded intergovernmental organisation. 

In 2022, according to the latest Eurostat data, the 27 EU countries granted citizenship to a total of 7,296 stateless persons. As of 2013, the first year for which data is available, at least 67,600 stateless persons were granted citizenship, with more than half in Sweden.

Only 18 countries have simplified access to citizenship for stateless people, according to Globalcit. The process, however, varies from country to country and facilitations are not always provided. Ireland does not require stateless persons to have lived in the country for a certain period of time. In Greece, if a stateless person has lived in the country for 3 years, they can apply for citizenship. Belgium reduces the residence requirement from 5 years to 2 years, while 5 years of residence is also the criterion in Germany. Nine other EU countries, including Spain, Portugal and Romania, do not facilitate the acquisition of citizenship for stateless persons.

All EU countries, except Cyprus and Romania, grant citizenship to people born in the country who would otherwise be stateless. In Greece, children born to stateless parents acquire Greek citizenship if they are born in the country.

More obstacles on the path to citizenship

Citizenship acquisition is in any case the only status that recognises the holder as an equal member of society, giving him/her equal access to rights, but also a sense of security that there is no scenario of returning to the country of origin.

At a time when far-right forces are dragging European rulers towards tightening migration policy, it is certain that the challenges of acquiring citizenship will increase in member states. In Greece, the recent landmark decision of the Council of the State, which terminates Turkey’s recognition as a safe third country for refugees of five nationalities (Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Somalia), is expected to increase pressure on an already overburdened administration where, without realistic and systematic solutions, the problems of delays in residence permits and citizenship, instead of being corrected, will worsen, leaving thousands of people in limbo. 

*The cross-border data investigation was conducted as part of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet).

The project was coordinated by the Spanish journalism group Civio, with the participation of the following newsrooms: Deutsche Welle (Germany), Noteworthy (Ireland), OBCT (Italy), Dennik N (Slovakia) and MIIR (Greece).

To read more on the methodology of the investigation, please check the boxes on methodology at the end of Civio’s reports: here, here and here. 

Credit: Εuropean Union-EP

• Greece is spending the largest part (37%) of its green-transition money on renewable-energy projects. Only 11% is going to projects that directly address climate change. 
• Of the 172 green milestones and targets, the Greek government has yet to meet 79% of them. 
• To date, disbursements for green investments are stalled at €3 billion, while Greece has access to a total of €14.3 billion in green bonds. 
• Greece’s renewables projects are in trouble due to inadequate planning. A much-postponed study is expected in late 2025. In the meantime, the country risks being hauled before the European Court of Justice for the irregular siting of wind turbines. 
• None of Greece’s projects have involved proper environmental auditing. But Greece is nonetheless betting on the untried technology of carbon capture and storage. 
• The recovery plan’s “no significant harm” principle looks inadequate from an environmental standpoint. 

The term “green investment” has long since lost the prestige it once enjoyed. Renewable-energy installations (wind turbines, solar photovoltaics, etc.) now encounter systematic opposition from Greek country-dwellers. Meanwhile, a pile of money from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) has become available to fund the so-called green transition and promote Europe’s self-sufficiency in energy. So what will this transition involve? And will proper protections be afforded to the local environment?

The European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet) and the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting (MIIR) have put the European Commission’s own data under the microscope, alongside the national recovery plans of Greece and 10 other countries in southern and eastern Europe. We hope to shed light on the real impact of the projects funded by the EU scheme.

How much of Greece’s allocation is going to climate targets?

The new EU money means different things for different EU countries. For some, the recovery fund represents a unique opportunity to achieve development. This is particularly true for the countries of southern and eastern Europe, which have received the greatest funding in relation to GDP. These include Greece, Croatia, Spain, Romania, Romania, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Hungary and Slovakia. It is why we chose to look at these countries in particular.

All 11 countries examined are meeting the requirement that 37% of their allocation be invested in the green transition. Some exceed it by far. In particular, Hungary devotes 67% of its resources to climate and environmental objectives. Bulgaria, in second place, is also spending more than half (57%) of its funds on green measures, and Slovakia and Poland are close behind with 48% and 47% respectively. Greece is in tenth place with 38%. 

A more detailed breakdown of green-transition spending shows that Greece (together with 4 other countries: Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Hungary) committed the largest share of its money to renewable-energy projects. Four countries (Croatia, Spain, Portugal and Slovakia) targeted energy efficiency measures. Only two countries (Romania and Italy) directed the lion’s share of their money to sustainable transport projects.

It is hard to know with certainty why countries decide to invest more in one target than another. However, we can speculate about their motivations. For example, Poland, Hungary and Lithuania have invested more than half of their allocation in renewable-energy projects. Eurostat figures show that Poland and Hungary in particular rank last among EU countries for renewable-energy consumption. They therefore have an extra incentive to invest in this area in order to comply with existing European targets.

But this is not the case of Greece’s national plan, which nonetheless directs much (37%) of its money to renewables. Based on the same Eurostat statistics, Greece is in the middle of the European pack in terms of renewables with 22.7% (representing the total renewable share for transport, electricity, heating and cooling). The EU-27 average figure is 23%.

So why did Greece choose to invest disproportionately in renewables projects compared to other areas, notably energy efficiency (33%, mainly meaning the renovation of poorly insulated buildings)? And why is it investing so little in climate mitigation and adaptation (only 11%, even though this challenge is a critical concern for Greece) or in transport (3%, despite major deficiencies in Greek cities, especially Athens)?

“The Greek recovery plan was not done properly”, argues Theodota Nantsou, head of environmental policy at WWF Greece. “Where the money should have been channelled, and it was an opportunity, was the Greek building sector. That is, upgrades for energy efficiency, and better insulation of buildings. The climate crisis is coming and it will hit the building stock mercilessly.”

No thermal insulation

Of the approximately 6.5 million residences in Greece, more than half were built before 1980 and so have no thermal insulation. Based on data from Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy, 77% of those homes that have been issued energy performance certificates are classified in the three worst classes (E, Z and H), while less than 5% are in the two best classes.

Greece’s national “Save” programme uses the recovery fund’s resources for the thermal renovation of houses, but it is “completely inadequate”, says Nantsou. “It is too little money when Greece has such leaky buildings. This was a huge opportunity to upgrade the building sector so that basements, and old apartment buildings, and houses in villages that depend on coal and fire-burning stoves, are viable.”

The issue of thermal insulation of buildings is critical for another reason: it is inextricably linked to energy poverty, i.e. people’s inability to pay for the electricity and fuel that will keep their homes at tolerable temperatures.

As things stand, heating and cooling can be an expensive luxury for energy-poor Greeks. According to Eurostat data, more than one in three of them (34%) do not live in an adequately cool home during the summer months.

Credit: Freepik

Renewables without proper planning of land use

There is another conundrum at the heart of Greece’s national recovery plan. Despite the large share of investment channelled to renewables projects, local environmental protection has been poor.

Most of the measures included in the Greek plan did include zero-cost commitments to improve the regulatory framework in this or that area. In terms of the green transition, such commitments were “piecemeal and basically intended to benefit renewables”, Nantsou explains. They do not deal with Greece’s longstanding issues of poor land-use planning and environmental regulation.

“Greek renewables are indeed progressing rapidly”, she notes, “but that is because there is sun and wind, and not because the permitting process is good or because of proper land-use planning which tells the investor where and if the wind installation can be built.”

Wind-farm park at Petra Skeli, Crete – Credit: Documentary “Askos tou Aiolou”

Wind farms off the leash

It is for this reason that the EU Commission has an ongoing infringement case against Greece for its uncontrolled siting of wind farms (the procedure is stuck at the consultation stage since February 2023). Greece has no proper land-use plan for renewables, as the existing one is outdated (2008) and does not comply with the EU directive on the protection of Natura sites.

In a routine annual meeting with staff of the Greek environment ministry, Commission officials recently warned that Greece is now likely to be referred to the European Court of Justice “given that the revision of the renewables land-use plan, which should include an examination of cumulative impacts, is postponed from year to year”.

The environment ministry’s most recent such postponement runs till the end of 2025. The tender process for commissioning the study was launched in 2019.

Given this problematic framework for developing renewables, the Greek government added a clause to its recovery plan that will strengthen the regulations for offshore wind farms in particular. The same provision also provides for the “review” and “optimization” of land use for other renewable-energy projects, such as solar panels on agricultural land.

It is no coincidence that in the list of the 100 largest recipients of funding from the European recovery fund, a number of wind and solar operators are prominent, such as Terna Energy, which received the 12th largest grant (€250 million). Among the projects listed on the “Greece 2.0” website, “an electricity storage system crucial for the development of renewables” was prominent, with a budget of €200 million. The list also includes controversial carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, which will be discussed below.

It is worth noting that this list of the largest recipients was last renewed in November 2023: the Greek government has not adhered to the fund’s requirement to update the list twice a year. Based on the EU Commission’s guidelines, the recipient is considered to be the entity (a company or individual) that receives the fund’s resources directly and is not a contractor. Hence the list contains ministries and public agencies that subsequently contract out the projects, and it does not include all the private contractors that emerge after contracts are awarded. The same applies to the list of projects on the Greece 2.0 site, such as the aforementioned renewable-energy storage systems. For such projects it is nonetheless indicated that a competitive tender procedure will be followed for the contractors.

Credit: Pixabay

No reform of the environmental audit system

At the same time, Greece’s national plan includes no reform of environmental auditing. On this, Nantsou, of WWF, is unequivocal: “There is no serious environmental control in Greece. At the moment, anyone goes where they want and builds what they want, and they know that it will be legalised after a few years. They don’t pay the taxes they should, they don’t make sure they get a building permit as they should, or do the study as they should, or dump the waste water as they should. And then the real cost, the environmental cost, is borne by us all.”

Greece “has not set milestones and targets in order to build a robust control mechanism that is proven to help, as the OECD and the EU have said”, argues Nantsou. “When you have robust control mechanisms, you have a healthier environment, better innovation and healthier economic activity. Such reforms have not been included in the Greek plan.”

Far behind in meeting milestones

Regarding the fulfilment of the 172 milestones and targets and the 71 deadlines featured in Greece’s recovery plan, Greece has so far failed to meet 79% of them. This situation is also true of other countries in the region. Italy and Croatia have only met 25% of them.

€3 billion received so far by Greece for green investments

The total amount disbursed by Greece from the recovery fund for all the pillars of the programme stands at €17.2 billion, according to the Greece 2.0 website. Greece is entitled to receive €36 billion in loans (€17.73 billion) and non-repayable grants (€18.22 billion), which in total represents 16.2% of Greek GDP.

According to the data on NextGenerationEU green bonds (the financial mechanism that feeds the climate-related resources of the Recovery and Resilience Facility), Greece is eligible to receive €14.359 billion, which ranks it 5th among EU countries.

According to EU Commission figures, Greece has so far received a total of €2.84 billion under the green transition facility and an additional €153 million of initial funding under the RePowerEU programme, totalling almost €3 billion. The equivalent figure for Italy is €15.5 billion, with Poland in second place (€7 billion) and Spain third (€6.6 billion).

Carbon capture and storage: a controversial technology

The Greek plan includes carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. This technology allows carbon dioxide to be captured from factories and power plants, then compressed and stored in repositories in natural geological formations underground. It is controversial and possibly dangerous.

Specifically, the Greek plan provides for “the establishment of a legal framework, a licensing framework and a regulatory framework for carbon capture, usage and storage technologies”. Two specific investments were made: one to provide financial support “for the development of the first CO2 storage facility in Greece” and the second concerning “CO2 transport”.

The first and largest investment relates to a project of the company Energean, which is developing Greece’s first CO2 storage facility. This involves the conversion of “depleted” oil reservoirs in the subsea basin of Prinos near Kavala (northern Greece) into geological repositories. The project has been included in the Produc-E Green action plan, and has a total budget of €300 million. However, the final amount of its subsidy remains unconfirmed, as this particular plan includes different categories of subsidy which encompass the production of electric cars, chargers and batteries, as well as recycling.  

The second investment, under RePowerEU, concerns the construction of a pipeline in the Attica region. This will connect two cement plants to a liquefaction terminal (possibly in Revithoussa), from where the liquefied CO2 emissions will be transported by ship to the storage site in Prinos.

Right from the public-consultation stage, environmental organisations have been opposed to the inclusion of CCS investments. In a comment on the matter, WWF argued that CCS “is extremely costly and offers a questionable and scientifically unproven contribution to climate change mitigation” and that its use is not a “panacea for decarbonising industry and should not be an excuse” for avoiding it.

Nantsou elaborates: “This is essentially a fairy tale of the oil industry. In most cases it is being used as a means of mitigation, to absorb the industry’s own emissions. This way they can continue their polluting activity by burying their emissions.”

CCS is risky since it involves burying the carbon dioxide in rocks under high pressure, a process that can cause dangerous leaks into the subsoil. Although the technology is experimental, this has not stopped industries from requesting exemptions from their obligation to reduce their pollution on the grounds that they will later install CCS.

Worse still, in this case the risks are not limited to those mentioned above. The document accompanying the storage permit for the Prino investment makes clear that the prospective carbon repository is only partially depleted. In its words, “care will be taken to ensure that any potential oil or gas extraction will be limited to the necessary needs to manage pressure and ensure the safety of the storage sites, and any such extraction will only take place if it is necessary for the safe storage of CO2. The CO2, together with any oil or gas that may be extracted, will be separated and returned for permanent storage.”

Credit: Hellenic Hydrocarbons and Energy Resources Management Company (HEREMA)

“No significant harm”: an inadequate principle

According to the technical guidance provided by the EU Commission to the member states, the so-called “no significant harm” principle must be applied to all projects included in national recovery plans. This stipulates that no measure should cause significant harm to existing environmental objectives.

Beyond the obviously ambiguous nature of the term (i.e., the definition of what constitutes significant harm), the Commission has been criticised from the outset by environmental groups for its failure to ensure that the recovery measures are accompanied by environmental protection.

Green10, an umbrella group of ten international environmental organisations, complained in a public statement about the principle’s simplified criteria as presented in the technical guidance. It would appear that the environmental assessments of projects undertaken by each EU country was a simple matter of box-ticking on questionnaires.

After reviewing a number of European projects, Green10 found that “the assessments carried out by member states under the ‘no significant harm’ criterion were of poor quality and would not be effective in preventing environmental harm”.

In particular, “many recovery plans do not contain enough detail to allow for an assessment of their environmental impact”, while some “approved measures do not even specify the exact locations or details, and therefore the measures should not have been approved”. For example, one approved plan included funding for 29 irrigation projects whose locations were not even disclosed! Unfortunately, such cases are not the exception, notes the environmental group. “The assessments provided by member states did not accurately reflect the potential damage of this and other such projects. That will only become apparent later in the process, when the funds have already been disbursed.”

By then it will be too late. The damage will have been done, and the money spent.

*This investigation is part of a cross-border European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet) project, headed by Openpolis, with the participation of MIIR, Dennik N and Eurologus.

Next image credit: European Union-EP 

In late June 2020, Robert Williams, an African-American resident of Detroit, was arrested at the entrance of his home in front of his two young daughters. No one could tell him why. At the police station, he was informed that he was considered a suspect in the 2018 robbery of a store, as his face was identified by in-store security surveillance footage. The identification was based on an old driver’s licence photo. After thirty hours in custody, Robert Williams was eventually released. The cynical confession of the Detroit police officers was disarming: “the computer probably made a mistake.” 

A similar incident occurred in June 2019 to Michael Oliver, also an African-American Detroit resident, who was arrested after the alleged identification of his face on a security-camera video. He was taken to trial, where he was eventually acquitted three months after his arrest. Similarly, in a test study of Amazon’s Rekognition software, the program incorrectly identified 28 members of Congress (!) as people who had previously been arrested for a crime. The misidentifications overwhelmingly involved blacks and Latinos. But do not assume that this only happens in the US. 

As discussed in the previous two parts of MIIR’s investigation on “The Digital Walls of Fortress Europe”, the EU, as part of a new architecture of border surveillance and mobility control, has in recent years introduced a number of systems to record and monitor citizens moving around the European space.

The EU is using different funding mechanisms for research and development, with an increasing emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which can also use biometric data. Between 2007 and 2013 (but with projects running until 2020) the most relevant of these was the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), followed by Horizon 2020. These two programmes have funded EU security projects worth more than €1.3 billion. For the current period 2021-2027, Horizon Europe has a total budget of €95.5 billion, with a particular focus on ‘security’ issues. Technologies such as automated decision-making, biometrics, thermal cameras and drones are increasingly controlling migration and affecting millions of people on the move. Border management has become a profitable multi-billion-euro business in the EU and other parts of the world. According to an analysis by TNI (Border War Series), the annual growth of the border-security market is expected to be between 7.2 % and 8.6 %, reaching a total of USD 65-68 billion by 2025. 

The largest expansion is in the global Biometric Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) markets. The biometrics market itself is projected to double its turnover from $33 billion in 2019 to $65.3 billion by 2024. A significant part of the funding is directed towards enhancing the capabilities of EU-LISA (European Agency for the Operational Management of Large Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice) which is expected to play a key role in managing the interoperability of databases for mobility and security control. The activities of this supercomputer are funded by:

• a grant from the general budget of the EU. 
• a contribution from the member states related to the operation of the Schengen area and Eurodac related measures.
• direct financial contributions from member states. 

Chris Jones, Executive Director of the non-profit organisation Statewatch, has been following the money trail starting in Brussels for several years. He explains that “EU-research projects are usually run by consortia of private companies, public bodies and universities. Private companies receive the largest sums, more than public bodies.” A recent Statewatch study (Funds for Fortress Europe: spending by Frontex and EU-LISA, January 2022) highlights that around €1.5 billion was directed to private contractors for the development and strengthening of EU-LISA in the period 2014-2020, with the largest increase occurring after 2017 and the peak of the refugee crisis. 

The surveillance oligopoly

One of the most important contracts signed in 2020, worth €300 million, was between French companies Idemia and Sopra Steria for the implementation of a new Biometric Matching System (BMS). These companies often win new contracts as they have agreements for the maintenance of the EES, EURODAC, SIS II and VIS systems. Other companies that have been awarded high-value contracts for EU-LISA-related work are Atos, IBM, and Leonardo – for €140 million – and the consortium Atos, Accenture and Morpho (later Idemia) which in 2016 signed a contract worth €194 million.

Data collected by Statewatch also shows cooperation – usually through joint ventures – in the expansion of the EU-LISA system with companies of Greek interests, such as Unisystems SA (owned by the Quest Group of former President of the Association of Greek Industrialists Th. Fessa), which signed a €45 million contract in 2019. Similarly, European Dynamics SA (owned by Konstantinos Velentzas) participated in a €187 million contract awarded in 2020, and Luxembourg-based Intrasoft International SA (previously owned by Kokkalis interests) is participating with five other companies in a €187 million project in 2020. 

The new frontier of AI and the pressures on the EU

In April 2021, the European Commission published its long-awaited draft regulation on artificial intelligence (AI ACT). The consultation process is expected to take some time. This important piece of legislation exceeds 200 pages and which will be – among other things – a refinement of the data protection legislation (Directive 680/2016). There is expected to be considerable pressure exerted by companies and operators in the sector until the bill is submitted in its final form to the European Parliament.

MIIR has investigated the records of official meetings on AI and digital policy issues between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager (“A Europe Fit for the Digital Age”), Commissioner Thierry Breton (Internal Market) and their staffs between December 2019 and March 2022. It emerges that at least 14 agencies, private sector giants and consortia of companies related to the security and defence sector met with key representatives of the European Commission 71 times in 28 months to discuss issues related to digital policy and AI. Most meetings with the Commissioners were held by DIGITALEUROPE, an organisation representing 78 corporate members, including major defence and security companies such as Accenture, Airbus and Atos. Other consortia were also identified to be lobbying heavily, such as the European Round Table for Industries (ERT) which represents a number of defence and security companies such as Leonardo, Rolls-Royce and Airbus.

High-risk systems

The proposal for the European regulation (COM/2021/206 final) adopted in April 2021, gives a good overview of the AI systems and applications that are expected to be regulated, and the risks of their unregulated operation at Europe’s entry points. As stated: “[…] it is appropriate to classify as high-risk AI systems intended to be used by the competent public authorities responsible for tasks in the areas of immigration management, asylum and border control as polygraphs and similar tools or for detecting the emotional state of an individual; for assessing certain risks presented by natural persons entering the territory of a member state or applying for a visa; for assessing certain risks presented by natural persons entering the territory of a member state or applying for a visa; for assessing the risk of a person’s personal data […]”

The critical parameter

The scope of the field where ‘high-risk’ AI systems can be applied seems wide. Despite hopes that a new directive will regulate how they operate, there is one parameter that may remove this possibility. As revealed in an internal presentation by the European Commission’s internal review that took place in May and was brought to light by Statewatch, the new regulation, if passed, will come into force 24 months after it is signed and will not apply to all systems, as it is not expected to be retroactive to those on the market before the effective date.

Robo-dogs in action: Algorithms and nightmarish research projects

“There is a great effort by EU institutions and member states to increase the number of deportations. The EU has poured money and resources and these databases to essentially say ‘we want to help remove these people from European soil’,” Statewatch’s Chris Jones points out. Indeed, automation and the use of industry-pushed algorithmic tools are already playing an important role at Europe’s entry points, raising many questions about safeguarding the rights of refugees and migrants. It is not only the profiling that worries those who criticise these EU projects, but also the quality of the data on which this process is based. “It looks like a ‘black box’, where we don’t know exactly what’s inside,” says refugee law specialist and anthropologist Petra Molnar, who focuses on the risk of automation without a human factor in decision-making when it determines human lives.

Some of the major pilot systems funded in the past few years include the following:

• iBorderCtrl – “smart” lie detectors 

Combines facial matching and document authentication tools with AI technologies. It is a “lie detector”, tested in Hungary, Greece and Latvia, and involved the use of a “virtual border guard”, personalised for the gender, nationality and language of the traveller – a guard asking questions via a digital camera. The project was funded with €4.5 million from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, and has been heavily criticised as dangerous and pseudo-scientific (“Sci-fi surveillance: Europe’s secretive push into biometric technology”, The Guardian, 10 December 2020; “We Tested Europe’s New Lie Detector for Travelers – and Immediately Triggered a False Positive”, The Intercept, 26 July 2019).

It was piloted under simulated conditions in early July 2019 at the premises of TRAINOSE in a specially designed area of the Security Studies Centre in Athens. Before departure the traveller had to upload a photo of an ID or passport to a special application. They then answered questions posed by a virtual border guard. Special software recorded their words and facial movements, which might have escaped the attention of an ordinary eye, and in the end the software calculated – supposedly – the traveller’s degree of sincerity.

On 2 February 2021, the European Court of Justice ruled on a lawsuit brought by MEP and activist Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) against the privacy of this research project, which he called pseudo-scientific and Orwellian.

• Roborder (an autonomous swarm of heterogeneous robots for border surveillance) 

• Foldout 

The €8.1 million Foldout research project does not hide its aims: “in recent years irregular migration has increased dramatically and is no longer manageable with existing systems”. The main idea of the project, piloted in Bulgaria and being rolled out in Finland, Greece and French Guinea, is to place motion sensors on land sections of the border where terrain or vegetation makes it difficult to detect an irregular crossing. With any suspicious movement, human or vehicle, there will be the possibility of sending a drone to that point or activating ground cameras for additional monitoring. The consortium developing it is coordinated by the Austrian Institute of Technology (which has received €25 million from 37 European projects).

Among the organisations lobbying for these projects at the European level, we met EARTO, a consortium of research centres and project beneficiaries in various fields, including security. These included KEMEA in Greece, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (140 EU-funded research projects, including Roborder) and the Austrian Institute of Technology (Foldout). 

Many of the Horizon 2020 research projects (Roborder, iBorderCtrl, Foldout, Trespass, etc.) have been described by their own authors as still “immature” for widespread use. However, the overall shift in the European Union’s approach to the use of AI for mobility control and crime prevention can be seen in the ever-increasing funding of the European Security Fund. One such project is the supply of thousands of mobile devices by the Greek police that will allow citizens to be identified using facial recognition and fingerprinting software. The total cost of the project, undertaken by Intracom Telecom, exceeds €4 million and 75% comes from the European Security Fund. 

The Samos “experiment”

“Borders and immigration are the perfect laboratory for experiments. Opaque, high-risk conditions with low levels of accountability. Borders are becoming the perfect testing ground for new technologies that can later be used more extensively on different communities and populations. This is exactly what you see in Greece, right?”, asks lawyer Petra Molnar. The answer is in the affirmative, both for the north and the south of the country.

On the island of Samos on Greece’s south-eastern border with Turkey, at the new migrant camp which the Greek government is almost advertising, two special pilot systems called HYPERION and CENTAUR are being put into operation.

• HYPERION is an asylum management system for all the needs of the Reception and Identification Service. It processes biometric and biographical data of asylum seekers, as well as of the members of NGOs visiting the relevant structures and of the workers in these structures. It is planned to be the main tool for the operation of the Closed Reception Centres (CRCs) as it will be responsible for access control, monitoring of benefits per asylum seeker using an individual card (food, clothing supplies, etc.) and movements between the CRCs, and accommodation facilities. The project includes the creation of a mobile phone application that will provide personalised information to the user, to act as their electronic mailbox regarding their asylum application process, with the ability to provide personalised information.
• CENTAUR is a digital system for the management of electronic and physical security around and within the premises, using cameras and AI behavioural analytics algorithms. It includes centralised management from the Ministry of Digital Governance and services such as: signalling perimeter breach alarms using cameras (capable of thermometry, focus and rotation) and motion analysis algorithms; signalling of illegal behaviour alarms for individuals or groups of individuals in assembly areas inside the facility; and use of unmanned aircraft systems to assess incidents inside the facility without human intervention. 

“CENTAUR uses cameras that have a great ability to focus on specific individuals, cameras that can also take someone’s temperature. The most important thing is not that CENTAUR will use this image for security reasons, it is that behavioural analysis algorithms will also be used, without explaining exactly what it means,” says lawyer and member of Homo Digitalis, Kostas Kakavoulis. As he points out, “an algorithm learns to come to certain conclusions based on some data we have given it. Such an algorithm will be able to distinguish between the fact that person X may have increased aggressive behaviour, and may attack other asylum seekers or guards, or may want to escape from the accommodation facility illegally. Another use of behaviour analysis algorithms is lie analysis, which can judge whether our behaviour and our words reflect something that is true or not. This is mainly done through the analysis of biometric data, the data that we all produce through our movement in space, through our physical presence, through our physical appearance and also the way we move our hands, the way we blink, the way we walk, for example. All these may seem insignificant, but if someone can collect them over a long period of time and can correlate them with the data of many other people, they may be able to come to conclusions about us, which may surprise us, about how aggressive our behaviour can be, how much anxiety we have, how afraid we are, whether we are telling the truth or not.” In the current legislation, it is prohibited to process personal data without the possibility of human intervention. 

Lawyer Petra Molnar has recently been researching the effects of AI applications on the control of migration flows. She was in Samos at the opening of the new closed reception centre. “Multiple layers of barbed wire, cameras everywhere, fingerprint stations at the rotating gate, entry-exit points. Refugees see it as a prison complex. I will never forget that. On the eve of the opening I was at the old camp in Vathi, Samos. We talked to a young mother from Afghanistan. She was pushing her young daughter in a pram and hurriedly typed a message on her phone that said: ‘If we go there, we’ll go crazy’. And every time I look at the camps with these systems, I realise that it embodies that fear that people have when they’re going to be isolated, and surveillance technologies are used to further control their movements.” 

Médecins Sans Frontières described the new structure in Samos as a “dystopian nightmare”. They were not alone. “The CENTAUR system is framed by the use of highly intrusive technologies to protect privacy, personal data as well as other rights such as behavioural and motion analysis algorithms, drones and closed circuit surveillance cameras. There is a serious possibility that the installation of the YPERION and CENTAUR systems may violate the European Union legislation on the processing of personal data and the provisions of Law 4624/2019”, the NGO Homo Digitalis points out. The Hellenic Human Rights Association, HIAS Greece, Homo Digitalis and a Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London Dr Niovi Vavoula filed a request before the Greek Data Protection Authority (DPA) on 18 February 2022 for the exercise of investigative powers and the issuance of an Opinion on the supply and installation of the systems. On Wednesday 2 March 2022, the Authority commenced an investigation of the Department of Immigration and Asylum in relation to the two systems in question. 

The automation fetish

“The problem is that authorities, and politicians, are beginning to perceive advanced data analytics as factors in some kind of objective and unbiased knowledge about security issues, because they have this aura of mathematical precision. But artificial intelligence and machine learning can actually be very accurate in reproducing and magnifying the biases of the past. We should remember that poor quality data will only lead to bad automated, biased decisions,” says researcher George Glouftsios.

We wonder why we use robot dogs, sound cannons and lie detectors at our borders but do not use AI to weed out, for example, racist border guards. 

Flash forward. In 2054 the Washington DC police department has created a special pre-crime police team that arrests crime suspects before they even commit the crime. The predictions are made by three mutant human beings, who are in a state of permanent hypnosis and are able to see the future, including the potential criminal, before he or she even goes through with the act. It is a stretch – for the moment – to claim that we are approaching the fantasy of Philip Dick in Minority Report.

But what is not far off is the existence of various systems of behavioural analysis including lie detectors, facial and emotional recognition software, with automated decision-making on the horizon. All this – in a context of militarisation of the EU’s external borders, in a context of treating people on the move as a potential threat – risks creating a dangerous human laboratory, a high-risk experiment around fundamental human rights. 

Check out: Part 1 – The ecosystem of European biometric monitoring and surveillance data

Check out: Part 2 – Trapped in a digital surveillance system

*This article has been produced within the Panelfit project, supported by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission (grant agreement n. 788039). The Commission did not take part in the production of the article and is not responsible for its content. The article is part of the independent journalistic production of EDJNet

Photo: Shutterstock/sakhorn

Research-text: Ioanna Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios (MIIR)  

Research and graph development: Thanasis Trombukis (iMEdD Lab)*.

MIIR and iMEdD research on Greek prisons during the pandemic period in the context of an analysis of data from 32 countries carried out simultaneously by 12 European media led by Deutsche Welle in the framework of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet).

“For the last 3 weeks the prison has been in a state of turmoil, wards are being closed from one moment to the next, prisoners are being quarantined out of nowhere. The prison administration, unable to provide basic protection measures against Covid-19 and unable to manage the sudden increase in cases, has decided to impose a permanent confinement regime on us beyond what we are already experiencing.” 

This is the beginning of the open letter sent on 27 March 2022 by prisoners of the Women’s Prison of Korydallos, recounting the conditions in the prison while in Greece, as in most of the world, the fifth wave of the pandemic continues. The image conveyed from inside the prison is not a long way from the image conveyed by Greek prisoners at the beginning of the 4th wave. At that time, for example, there were more than 40 cases among inmates of the Diavata prison in Thessaloniki (November 2021). Similarly, at the end of the 4th wave, 20 prisoners and 7 prison officers tested positive and 50 were quarantined in the Nea Alikarnassos prison (February 2022).

The management of the pandemic in Europe’s prisons was the subject of a major survey which analysed data from 32 countries. It was conducted simultaneously by 12 European media led by Deutsche Welle as part of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet). MIIR (Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting) and iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development) were commissioned to collect and process the specific data concerning Greece.

In the first part of the research, published on 12 March, we examined the spread of the virus in Greek and European prisons since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, and came to some striking conclusions on prison conditions. For example, Greece appears in 7th place on the list of the most overcrowded prisons in Europe, while the minimum living space of 4 sqm per prisoner under international conventions is violated in 25 out of 34 Greek prisons. This makes prisoners even more exposed to the virus than they are already.

Our comparative analysis of data revealed that during the pandemic, the occupancy rate of Greek prisons not only did not decrease, but actually increased, with the result that Greece was among the countries that had high spread of the virus in prisons compared to the general population. Specifically, by 2 July 2021, 16 months after the start of the pandemic, it is estimated that 7.9% of prisoners overall had contracted Covid-19, while 4.1% of the general population in Greece was infected with the virus. Our conclusions are confirmed by the Council of Europe’s annual report published on 5 April, which states that on 31 January 2021 Greece hosted 106.1 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants – up 3.6% compared to 2020. The equivalent figure in Council of Europe member states was 101.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, down 2.3% compared to 2020 (104.3). According to the report, in Europe as a whole, prison occupancy fell by 5.3% compared to a year earlier (from 90.2 to 85.4 prisoners per 100 available places). Greece was among the countries reporting overcrowding (111.4 prisoners per 100 places), behind Romania (119.3 prisoners per 100 places) but ahead of Cyprus (110.5), Belgium (108.4), Turkey (108.3) and Italy (105.5). Greece also has a very high prisoner-to-staff ratio (2.8 prisoners for every staff member), while the European average is 1.4. 

The publication of the first part of the survey was followed on 21 March by a question to the European Commission from Left Group MEP Konstantinos Arvanitis, asking whether “it is acceptable to transform Greek prisons into overcrowding centres, given that Greece is one of the few European countries that refused to proceed with the measure of decongestion, which is a demonstrably effective strategy for dealing with the pandemic, and despite the dramatic appeals of the United Nations”, and whether the Commission “considers that the worsening of the overcrowding conditions, resulting inter alia from the drastic reduction in the transfer of prisoners, is compatible with due respect for the principles of necessity and proportionality and with the fundamental human rights of prisoners”. The reply is currently pending.

A few days earlier, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, at its recent meeting on the enforcement of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights by member states, had expressed its concern about overcrowding in Greek prisons, stressing that this is a problem that has not been effectively addressed and has been outstanding “for more than ten years”. The committee made particular reference to the need to decongest the prisons of Ioannina, Korydallos and Thessaloniki, and called on the Greek government to provide a specific timetable for addressing the issue.

With the 5th wave of the pandemic just around the corner, we examined in the second part of the survey what happened in Greek prisons before and during the 4th wave, i.e. the period from 1 July 2021 to 18 February 2022, two dates for which we have detailed data for each prison.

The data shows that 2671 prisoners were diagnosed with coronavirus during this period, with the prevalence in prisons being 1.4 times higher compared to the general population. Specifically, 870 cases had been recorded by 1 July, while by 18 February 2022, 3541 cases had been recorded. Given that the average total number of prisoners in this eight-month period was 11037, it is estimated that 24% of prison inmates in that period were diagnosed with Covid-19, compared to 17% in the general population.

The highest prevalences, with more than 500 cases per thousand prisoners, were recorded in the Nafplio, Corinth, Kos and Amfissa detention centres. During this period the Nafplio prison held more than 400 prisoners, while its capacity was 273. 

Comparison with the general population

During this period, a higher rate of cases in prisons compared to the general population was recorded in 15 of the 22 Greek regions we examined.

Notable are Fokida and Argolida, where the incidence within prisons was 4.7 and 4.1 times higher compared to the general population, while in Korinthos it was 3.9 times higher. Overall in the 22 regions during the eight months under review there were 205.5 cases per 1000 inhabitants, while in prisons there were 242 cases per 1000 prisoners.

Furthermore, the prevalence within prisons during the 4th wave was even higher compared to the previous period. In the period from 1 March 2020 to 1 July 2021, in 13 regions of Greece the incidence within prisons was higher compared to the general population and in 9 regions it was lower. According to available data, by November 2020, 0.9% of prisoners had tested positive for the coronavirus, compared to 0.4% of the general population. By February 2021, 3.8% of prisoners had tested positive, compared to 1.6% of the general population. In July 2021 the rates were 7.9% and 4% respectively. In November 2021, the prevalence in prisons was still more than double (16.8% vs. 7.2%). By February 2022, a period covering the fourth wave of the pandemic, 32.6% of prisoners had been diagnosed with coronavirus compared to 21.2% of the general population. 

It is interesting to compare the rate of increase in cases inside and outside prisons during the period from November 2021 to February 2022: cases outside prisons increased by 193.7%, while cases inside prisons increased by only 88.8%. For prisons, however, this did not mean a reduction in the problem. By February 2022 a higher proportion of prisoners had already contracted coronavirus compared to the general population, which may be attributed to inadequate containment measures. 

Based on our research and the response we received to a query to the General Secretariat for Anticrime Policy, among the measures taken since the beginning of the pandemic were the suspension of prison visits during outbreak periods and a halving of them during the rest of the time; the curtailment of leave (educational, regular, etc.) for prisoners; a reduction of employment and “day jobs”; restrictions within prison shops; and the creation of an electronic visit register.

However, as pointed out in the first part of the survey, no overall plan was implemented to decongest the prisons (reduction of the number of inmates, reduction of sentences, targeted transfers). Moreover, there continued to be serious shortages of health staff and protective equipment, as well as a manifest sloppiness in the management of cases and care of the sick. Indicative is the testimony of an inmate of Larissa prison, Vangelis Stathopoulos, who himself contracted coronavirus in December 2020: “So anyone who gets sick is put in a ward for 14 days with all the other Covid patients, which means that if someone has a heavy viral load they will automatically spread it to everyone else and they can all get very sick. So the procedure is that we put all the sick people together and whatever happens will happen.” 

This picture is not far from the one conveyed by the inmates of the Women’s Prison of Korydallos, while similar complaints have been made by prisoners of the Domokos Detention Centre. There, only 4 cases had been detected by 2 July 2021, while in the eight months that followed, until 18 February, the cases reached 152. That number is estimated to have since increased: in March alone at least 18 more prisoners reportedly tested positive for coronavirus. 

Korydallos prison – Credit: Prisoners’ Solidarity Network

Delay in vaccinations

A crucial factor in the increased spread of Covid-19 during the 4th wave of the pandemic appears to have been the delay in the start of the vaccination programme in Greek prisons. This only began on 1 July 2021, several months after the start for the general population, despite the fact that prisoners are a vulnerable population living in closed, and therefore dangerous, conditions.

According to the minutes of the Special Standing Committee on the Penitentiary System and other Inmate Confinement Facilities of 10 June 2021, only 388 inmates (out of a total of 11,031, 3.5%) and 504 employees had completed vaccination. During the same period, only 22 prisoners had received the first dose. That is a total of 410 inmates vaccinated, the vast majority of them with the J&J single-shot vaccine. By 18 November 2021 – i.e. at the beginning of the 4th wave – only 59% of prisoners had been vaccinated (6,600 prisoners).

“Vaccinating prisoners should be a top priority for every state because their living conditions enhance disease transmission. Prisoners are under the responsibility of the state, they are not able to protect themselves and their health, or to take the measures they themselves consider necessary to prevent the risks posed by the pandemic”, stresses Iphigenia Kamtsidou, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and member of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe (CPT). “It is for this reason that a democratic state should first and foremost take care of the health and lives of the people under its responsibility.” 

Can Greece change direction?

On 9 March 2022, the Greek judge of the European Court of Human Rights, Ioannis Ktistakis, presented to the parliamentary committee responsible for monitoring ECHR judgments the data on Greek convictions in Strasbourg, as well as the pending individual appeals from Greece. All paint a dark picture of the living conditions in Greek prisons. According to Ktistakis, of the total of 2,214 individual appeals pending against Greece (representing more than 3% of the total of 70,150 pending appeals from 47 states), 1,782, or 81%, concern exclusively the conditions of detention in the country’s prisons. “What is particularly worrying in the case of Greece is its inability to put things right, to comply in a timely and substantial manner with the Strasbourg judgments,” the ECHR judge told parliament.

March marked two years since the emergence of the coronavirus in our country and no one knows how long the pandemic will remain in our lives. “Covid-19 should be a wake-up call to invest in better prison conditions and reduce the use of incarceration,” says Catherine Heard, director of the World Prison Research Programme. In the case of the management of the pandemic in Greek prisons and during the 4th wave of the pandemic, however, the lesson does not seem to have been learned yet.

*Supplementary report by Kelly Kiki (iMEdD Lab)

The project is a collaboration within the European Data Journalism Network

Project leader: Deutsche Welle

Partners: Alternatives Economiques, Civio, El Confidencial, EURologus, Il Sole24Ore, iMEdD, MIIR, OBC Transeuropa, Openpolis, Pod črto, VoxEurop

Ajdin Kamber/Shutterstock.com

Parwana Amiri, a 17-year old girl from Afghanistan, went to school in mid-April for the first time since she fled her home country. The last time she was in school was 2 years ago – a long time for someone her age, but not long enough for her to forget what she had to go through. On her Facebook page, she wrote: “(I remember) my last day at school in Afghanistan. I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye to my classmates. We had to cross the desert and travel by sea. The last time I saw a school building was in Turkey, but I never went inside.”

Parwana is one of the thousands of children in Europe who are deprived of access to education because they live in refugee camps. This is not coincidental: 6 years after the surge of refugees arriving in Europe, refugee camps are hindering rather than facilitating social integration. “They shouldn’t be punished, especially the children, because they fled from a war” a spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders in Lesbos told MIIR a few days after the devastating fires at the Moria camp that occurred last September. The Ombudsman’s report, published in March, confirms the huge shortcomings of the educational integration of children living in Reception and Identification Centres (RRCs) in Greece. This was largely due to the management and organisation of the camps and how they are cut off from society.  

A monotonous life at camp

“Girls and boys slug down alcohol to drown their sorrows. Many have become alcoholics. Life in the camp is the same every single day,” Parwana tells MIIR, upon describing her life at the Ritsona Refugee camp. However, her camp seems to be more bearable than the other accommodation facilities – the Kara Tepe camp in Lesbos, which was hastily erected in September to replace Moria, is one of them.

Moria was Europe’s largest camp, housing thousands of people and known worldwide for its squalid living conditions. It was intended for only 3,000 people, but it eventually housed 20,000 persons. In the days leading to the devastating fire, a total of 13,000 people lived near the olive trees around the main part of the camp which residents referred to as a “jungle”.

In the aftermath of the disaster, a medical practitioner from Doctors Without Borders shared his experiences with MIIR: “Many children contemplated suicide to end their misery. In all my years as a doctor, I have never witnessed this kind of situation anywhere else.”

Symbiot/Shutterstock.com

The mechanism of the said Fund was the result of a political agreement between the leaders of the EU and the European Parliament, with the aim of helping repair the economic and social damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. EU Member States had until April 30 to submit to the Commission for approval their National Recovery Plans detailing their reforms and investment projects that will be financed by the recovery fund.

The Recovery and Resilience Facility is the key financial instrument of the temporary NextGenerationEU Programme, which came alongside the decision to provide targeted aid in the EU’s long-term budget (Multiannual Financial Framework) for the years 2021-2027, constituting the largest package ever financed from the EU budget totalling €1.8 trillion.

In particular, NextGenerationEU’s 750 billion will be raised from borrowing on the markets (through a joint issuance of EU debt bonds to be repaid by 2058). The bulk of the €672.5 billion will be provided by the fund in the form of non-repayable grants and loans to member countries.

The allocation will be made up of €360 billion in loans and €312.5 billion in grants (€338 billion in current prices), causing considerable discontent in countries with high deficits and public debt, such as the ‘Southern EU countries’, which wanted larger amounts of grants. They also resent receiving loans that they will have to repay directly to the EU.

However, the dissatisfaction is not only limited to the distribution between grants and loans, but also to the pre-allocation of the money that each Member State will receive and the allocation criteria which the European Commission decided on. This is because Italy and Spain, which were hit very hard especially in the first wave of the coronavirus, may be the top two countries in terms of funding, but France and Germany, the most robust and economically powerful countries in the EU, are right behind them.

NextGenerationEU, apart from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, includes the newest programme called “REACT-EU” – which is essentially the continuation of the first two Coronavirus Response Initiatives (CRII, CRII+) – while additional funds will be drawn from other European programmes such as Horizon 2020, InvestEU, European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Just Transition Fund (JTF).  

All of the money mentioned earlier is also shared among the member states, with Greece for example being able to receive 1.7 billion from REACT-EU, 431 million euros from the Fair Transition Fund and 365.3 million euros from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. Together with the 17.8 billion euros of funding from the Recovery Fund, this amounts to 20.3 billion euros of funds (€20,311,300,000).

In the same context, adding up the amounts of the 4 recovery instruments of the NextGenerationEU, from which we have drawn our data, Italy could receive up to 81.7 billion, Spain 81.6 billion, France 43.9 billion, Germany 29.5 billion, Poland 28.5 billion, Romania 17.3 billion and Portugal 16 billion.    

In addition to the above, member states have additional access to the 360 billion loan pool, with each member state able to raise up to 6.8% of its Gross National Income (GNI) in 2019. As set out in the Regulation establishing the recovery plan, the European Commission signs a loan agreement with each member state, and a special account is created to repay the due capital principal, interest, etc.

For Greece, the maximum amount of borrowing – which we calculated from Eurostat’s databases on population and GNI 2019 for the 27 EU member states (from 2020), as set out in the plan’s directive – is €15 billion. As set out in the Directive, the amount of money borrowed by each member state cannot exceed the difference between the total cost of the Recovery and Resilience Plan and the maximum amount of the grant corresponding to the country under the mechanism.

The granting of loans is also conditional on the mobilisation of private funds, which will contribute to the implementation of the investments. For example, in the Resilience and Growth Plan presented by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on March 31, specifying that Greece will eventually use the 18.1 billion in grants and 12.7 billion in loans, it is stated that the loan financing should be structured as follows: 50% maximum financing from the recovery and resilience facility through the international financial institutions [European Investment Bank (EIB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), etc.], 30% from commercial banks and 20% from private investors’ own participation. Finally, one should not forget that European countries are expected to receive money from the European Structural Funds as well. The maximum amount that Greece can receive in the coming years from that fund is 40.4 billion euros.

Haris Mm/Shutterstock.com

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (Mark Twain)

On April 1, 2021, Greece was the sixth “best-performing” country in Europe in terms of the total number of confirmed deaths from Covid-19, counting 783 deaths per million inhabitants since the beginning of the pandemic (according to ourworldindata.org ). The safest places to survive the coronavirus in the year of the pandemic in Europe seem to have been at the two extremes: in the North (Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, although not Sweden, which followed a different model) and in the South (Cyprus and initially Greece). This is not a snapshot, but rather a general picture that applies to the average death rates in all three phases of the pandemic so far. In reality, the situation is much more complex, as the phenomenon is evolving dynamically.

The number of coronavirus deaths per capita in a country is a function of variables that are too difficult to define and accurately quantify to give safe conclusions. These variables include virus spread, degree of initial preparedness and subsequent strengthening of national health systems, response measures, population and geographical data (e.g. population distribution), behavioural trends, and evolution of the vaccination programme.

An overview of Covid-19 deaths is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions. Other epidemiological indicators are needed. “Excess mortality”, i.e. deaths from all causes in the coronavirus era which exceeded the average over a five-year reference period (2015-2019), skyrocketed in the majority of European countries. According to Eurostat data, in total, by November 2020, 450,000 more deaths were recorded in the EU than in the same reference period previously . The European platform EUROMOMO , which monitors mortality from any cause in the 27 EU member states, has recorded a relatively small increase in excess mortality in Greece in recent weeks.

Not all countries have been affected in the same way by non-Covid-19 deaths. In Greece, in the first ten months of 2020 excess mortality was close to or below the average of the last five years. But the situation started to change dramatically in November and December (when the second wave peaked). Then, in the first two months of 2021, there was an initial decline in “excess deaths” from all causes.

In Greece, 8,802 more deaths were recorded in 2020 compared to 2019. Deaths from Covid-19, however, were 4,881 , and the difference of 4,921 deaths was not evenly distributed over the year.