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. 

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 

Research/text: Kostas Zafeiropoulos, Nikos Morfonios, Janine Louloudi (MIIR)

Data Analysis – Visualizations: Corina Petridi

Illustration: Louiza Karageorgiou 

On the 15th of December 2022 the European Medicines Agency announced that almost every EU country was facing medical replenishment gaps. It was known that a harsh winter was ahead for European countries facing both the Covid 19 pandemic and other seasonal viruses that were testing their health systems anew. However, what actually happened this year surpassed any forecast.

‘’To be honest, what took place this winter was that European countries were taken by surprise with such a large mismatch between supply and demand, especially for antibiotics’’, Steffen Thirstrup admits to MIIR – Health Head of EMA (European Medicines Agency), which is the competent body that guarantees the scientific assessment, supervision and monitoring for medicines safety in the EU.

From 2000 to 2018 there has been a 20-fold increase in recorded drug shortages in Europe. It’s like a disease that gets worse every year without -yet- a cure. The war in Ukraine and the energy crisis were used as a convenient excuse in various countries for political leaders to attempt to cover reality. But the problem seems to have other, timeless causes.

According to the latest 2022 European Pharmaceutical Union (PGEU) report, all EU countries that responded to the survey (including pharmaceutical chambers and pharmacy associations of 29 countries in the European region) experienced drug shortages in pharmacies in the last 12 months. The majority of countries reported that the situation worsened compared to the previous 12 months (75.86%) or remained the same (24.14%). No country recorded an improvement.

‘’Medicines shortages are increasing in Europe and have a huge negative impact on patients. They occur across all healthcare settings and involve both essential life-saving medicines and very commonly used medicines. Community pharmacists are very concerned about this phenomenon, which can compromise patients’ health. Moreover, pharmacies and pharmacists invest a lot of resources dealing with shortages which constitutes not only a financial burden, but also a loss of opportunity to spend time with other patient-centered tasks and to improve the quality of care”, Ilaria Pasarani,  General Secretary of PGEU, tells MIIR. On average, each pharmacy in the European Union spends 6.3 hours a week looking for missing medicines. In some countries this number reaches 20 hours per week.

‘’At present the situation is that most European countries are still reporting shortages. This is observed in 28 out of the 30 countries of the European Economic Area. The result would have been the same if you had also asked me two weeks ago,’’ EMA’s Steffen Thirstrup  points out to MIIR.

Nevertheless, which countries record the greatest drug shortages in recent years? Are the data reliable? What are the real reasons and why are we increasingly unable to find the medicines prescribed by our doctor in pharmacies? Which categories of drugs, which active substances are missing, and above all, why are they missing? The answers are not unequivocal, they are often difficult to find and they are not always common for all countries.

Inhomogeneity in records

At a pan-European level there is not yet a homogenized database recording drug shortages -i.e. in the same language- with data that can be seen in real time. There is not even a definitive European agreement on how a shortage is defined. Several European states have adopted the definition of the European Medicines Agency (EMA, 2019): “A shortage of a medicine for human or veterinary use occurs when the supply does not meet the demand at national level”.

Assessments for the actual duration of medicinal shortages are often difficult to be determined, precisely because of the gaps and inconsistencies in national medical association registries. Many listings do not even provide an (assessed) expiration date for each shortage. Most European countries have only started collecting standardized information on shortages in the last five years. There are also notable differences in the obligations surrounding the reporting of shortages. For example, in Denmark notifications are made only for “severe” shortages, while in Sweden only shortages with an expected duration of more than three weeks are required for notification by the system.

There are countries that do not even provide a registration website, while in others the database includes in parallel human, hospital, veterinary and vaccine medicines. Furthermore, not all countries publish their data in the same way. For example, the Greek National Organization for Medicines (EOF) doesn’t publish the shortages annually, doesn’t mention the classification of drugs, and does not systematically provide data about the duration of a shortage. EU member states are also far from harmonizing standards for recording and reporting shortages, a fact which hinders information-sharing and comparative analysis between countries. 

We asked the European Medicines Agency (EMA) whether it keeps aggregated data for all EU countries, but the answer was negative. Instead, the EMA referred us to the websites of the national medicine’s registries. 

‘’Some states have a very detailed network of information collection from community pharmacies, and from hospital pharmacies. But not everyone has it to the same degree. Some states have sophisticated IT systems to look at supply and demand, and can therefore respond much more quickly”, EMA’s Steffen Thirstrup explains, hoping this gap will be bridged in the future.

In an attempt to partially fill this information gap, MIIR together with collaborating media teams from EDJNET spent a three month period looking for data and managed to create an -as homogeneous as possible- updated database on drug shortages in Europe. We recorded 22,107 different entries over a five-year period (2018-2023) in a total of 9 European countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Greece, Romania, Austria, Belgium), from which it was possible to gather reliable data, either by extracting data from published statistics in the national medicine’s associations or by submitting data requests. In many of the above countries, we traced the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification, the marketing authorisation holder, the starting & ending date of the shortage and reasons for it being taken off circulation. 

Key Conclusions

From the total of the 9 aforementioned countries over the last five years (2018-2023), when adding up the new shortages of each year, it appears that Italy cumulatively registers the most shortages in absolute number (10,843) for human medicines, quite far from the second Czech Republic (2,699) and the third Germany (2,355). Lastly, Greece (389) is the country with the fewest records of shortages in absolute numbers.

Accordingly, 371 vaccine shortages were recorded in the countries under review in the period 2018-2023, with Italy leading (144 vaccine shortages), followed by Germany (102) and the Czech Republic (57). Belgium recorded the fewest shortages (8).

Nevertheless, the absolute number of medicines and vaccines in short supply is not always the best way to draw safe conclusions, given that not all countries keep record of their stocks with the same consistency and the same criteria. In addition, these are different reference populations, countries with different levels of demand, while the different pharmaceutical import-export balance must also be taken into account. 

The safest recording indicator that best describes the situation in each country is the duration of a shortage. In order to find the average duration of shortages in the European countries that we examined, we excluded extreme values ​​by calculating the median. Of the 22,107 drug entries we processed in total, we had data on shortages’ duration for 16,945.  Based on these, the European average duration of shortages is 94 days, meaning that it takes about three months for a drug to be back on the market. 

From the analysis MIIR conducted on the data collected, it appears that Greece has the longest median duration of shortages (130 days), followed by Germany (120 days) and Belgium (103 days). The Czech Republic may have been second in absolute numbers of shortages, but it registers the shortest amount of time with drugs in shortage (41 days).

The European average of vaccine shortages, again excluding extremes, amounts to 84 days, less than that for medicines.
For vaccines, the longest median duration of shortages is traced accordingly in Italy (111 days), Germany (68 days) and the Czech Republic (66).

The most comprehensive study carried out in recent years on medicine shortages was that of the Technopolis Group consultancy on behalf of the EU (Future-proofing pharmaceutical legislation – study on medicine shortages), which was published in December 2021. In that research, the Netherlands and Portugal turned out to be the “champions” of medicines in shortage in 2019 (over 1600 different drug shortages). In contrast, that year Austria, Croatia, Iceland and Greece recorded fewer than 100 shortages, relating to 60 or less different medicines. 

The same survey ascertained that the average duration across all shortages notices was 137 days and that 66% of all shortages were resolved within the first three months. The minimum duration of the shortage was one day, the maximum duration was about 13.5 years (!) and is related to amoxicillin which was in short supply in Spain from September 2005 until March 2019. Amoxicillin is still today among active substances that are missing mostly from the European market. However, it is noted that in all 9 countries for which data was collected by MIIR, very significant increases in shortages are recorded in 2022 compared to the previous year.

The largest percentage increase in the absolute number of drug shortages from 2021 to 2022 is recorded in Greece, which is due to the possible under-reporting by the Greek National Organisation for Medicines (EOF) or the non-declarations of the actual shortages. Pharmaceutical associations in Greece complain that the real shortages are much more than those declared by EOF.

“The shortages are neither 80 nor 130. They start from 400 and upwards. This is the image I have from running a pharmacy; I don’t care what EOF tells me. I find it reasonable for any government not to want to be exposed. If I were in the position of the respective government, I would do the same. I would call the EOF president and tell him to declare that we have at most 100 shortages. I don’t think you can have an objective view from EOF, its presidents are always appointed by the respective government,” says Konstantinos Lourantos, who has been the president of the Pharmaceutical Association of Attica for 27 years.

For the needs of this report we contacted and repeatedly sent written questions to the president of the Greek National Registry, D. Filippou, without receiving any answer.

Reasons of shortages 

According to the MIIR analysis, in a total of 6 countries (Germany, Spain, Greece, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic), the most drugs in shortage are those related to the neural system (1718 drugs, 19.03% of the total), such as anesthetics, psychotropics, antidepressants, anxiolytics, antiepileptics, antiparkinsonian drugs, etc.). In second place we find cardiovascular drugs (1307, 14.48% of all shortages) and in third place the anti-infectives for systemic use – antibiotics (1126 drugs, 12.47% of all). On the contrary, almost zero shortages are recorded in the same sample in the category of antiparasitic, insecticides and insect repellents.

Τhe latest report of the European Pharmaceutical Union PGEU (2022) for all European countries offered similar conclusions, according to which cardiovascular drugs were omitted in most countries (82.76%), followed by drugs for the nervous system and anti-infectives for systemic use – antibiotics (79.31%) and drugs for the respiratory system (75.86%).

In that survey almost all responding countries reported that drug shortages cause distress and suffering to patients (93.10%), discontinuation of treatments (89.66% of countries), increased co-payments as a result of more expensive and alternative solutions that are not reimbursed by the state (72.41%), but also fewer effective treatments (58.62%).

“I have been searching for 8 months and have not been able to find my medicine. The pharmacists tell me to be patient, it may come but we don’t know when”, 25-year-old Eleftheria, who suffers from a rare disease, tells MIIR. “They don’t even give me an explanation as to the reason why it suddenly stopped being available, all I hear is that this medicine is imported and that the multinational company that produces it hasn’t sent it,” she adds. As a substitute she takes another drug that does not fully cover her for the condition, and on the advice of her endocrinologist she has adjusted her diet to make up for the substances she lacks. She works as a babysitter in homes taking care of young children. “Especially this winter, I have been told by parents that not only simple medicines, respiratory and antibiotics for viruses are not easy to find, but even a simple serum,” she says.

The impact of Covid- 19

All researches converge that the problem is growing and concerns millions of patients on the European continent. “During the pandemic, but also in the post-pandemic era, with the post-COVID syndrome to have affected a large part of the population, the need for medicines and treatments increased. This fact led to an increase, to a certain extent, of the shortages of medicines”, underlined  Ioulia Tseti, CEO of the Tsetis Pharmaceutical Group of Companies and general secretary of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV).

But this explanation is not enough. As she explains, “the problems of the supply chain and the dependence of the European Union countries on raw materials from third countries, made the problem even more explosive. As well as the fact that countries such as India and China banned the export of raw materials for their own needs – this also aggravated the problem. And it is known that when raw materials are scarce, the price is high. We must not forget that the shortage of raw materials and the increase in energy costs were reinforced by the war in Ukraine, as the (once) rich and sufficient grain silo of Ukraine is a raw material for medicine production. Unfortunately, Europe is dependent on third countries and at some point, it must become independent, acquire sufficiency and self-sufficiency in raw materials.”

The war is not the only one to blame…

The root causes of the problem are generally the result of different economic, structural or regulatory causes, Ilaria Passarani, general secretary of the PGEU, underlines at MIIR. She herself summarizes these as follows:

“o   the increasingly globalized nature of pharmaceutical manufacturing, including Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API), with production concentrated in fewer sites distributed around the world;

o   Shifts in demand, resulting from longer term factors such as demographic change, but also short-term factors such as tendering of medicines leading to difficulties in providing sufficient quantities of medicines for some markets;

o   Pricing strategies, both low and high, and regulatory changes that in some cases may have an impact on supply;

o   the imposition of fixed quotas of medicines by the pharmaceutical industry, often not sufficient in relation to patients’ actual needs;

o   the removal of the traditional role of the full line wholesalers as a result of Direct to Pharmacy (DTP) schemes in some markets;

o   the abolition and ineffectiveness of public service obligation/minimum national stock keeping requirements in some countries;

• the lack of priority given to smaller markets;
• The effects of the European internal market dynamics (e.g., exports).”

Dependance and friction point

As it turns out, at European level the over-reliance on a small number of suppliers for active pharmaceutical ingredients and other raw materials has made it difficult for manufacturers to meet current demand. China and India together account for more than 60% of the world’s supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients in 2020. Parallel exports are often seen by pharmacists and the pharmaceutical industry as part of the problem.

“It is a fact that parallel exports magnify the problem as the more expensive prices of the same products in European countries push pharmacies to export in order to take advantage of their price difference and, by extension, increase their profitability”, Ioulia Tseti, CEO of the Tsetis Pharmaceutical Group of Companies, tells MIIR. 

At the same time, however, at the European level, pharmaceutical companies seem to have reduced the stocks they keep in their warehouses. Thus, when a problem occurs in a manufacturing plant, the stocks are not sufficient to meet the needs until the problem is overcome and drug production returns to normal.

“Parallel exports” are a challenging point  between pharmaceutical manufacturers and drug dealers, since through them the pharmacies get a part of the profits of the pharmaceutical industry. For this reason, the multinational pharmaceutical companies strictly control the quantities they give to the domestic pharmacies, in order to limit the chances of exporting their products and the loss of profits in developed markets with high prices. All of this encourages any pharmacists who can obtain drugs directly from the companies to do so, even though this happens at an extremely slow pace.

But what is Europe doing to deal with a problem that looks like a difficult balancing act in an industry with huge competing interests? Within the next few weeks, the European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou will submit the long-awaited proposals for the revision of the pharmaceutical regulations, after a long period of dialogue with the pharmaceutical industry, the relevant government authorities, health professionals, the academic community and representatives of patients. 

“This dialogue and resulting policy analysis showed that shortages of medicines have become a systemic challenge with numerous vulnerabilities, including the increased complexity and specialisation of supply chains, the lack of geographical diversification of sourcing for certain products and perceived regulatory complexity”, a Commission spokesperson admits to MIIR, adding that the upcoming bill will include “stricter procurement obligations, timely notification of shortages and withdrawals and enhanced transparency of stocks”.

* Read the second part of the MIIR investigation: Parallel exports, the EOF and the Greek Statistics of drug shortages.

Research-Text: Kostas Zafeiropoulos, Nikos Morfonios, Janine Louloudi (MIIR)

Data analysis-visualization: Korina Petridi

Illustration: Louiza Karageorgiou

“It’s been 8 months since the last time I got my medicine, I can’t find it anywhere no matter how far I’ve searched. It used to be a so-called rare drug, but now it has become a non-existent one” says 25-year-old Eleftheria. She suffers from a rare form of rickets, which is a metabolic disease of the bones. “I was told to search for it in a warehouse in the center of Athens, but I didn’t find it there either. Pharmacists advise me to be patient. There is no replacement. This situation is very serious for me, I have severe pains and my whole body is straining,” says Eleftheria to MIIR.

In Europe, about 25 million people suffer from a rare disease. The drugs that are needed are called “orphans” because they are not usually adopted by the research programs of the pharmaceutical industry. In Greece, however, as in many European countries, the shortages no longer concern only rare diseases but regular consumed ones, such as antibiotics, respiratory and cardiovascular drugs.

MIIR jointly with the collaborating journalistic teams of the EDJNET searched for data and managed to create a – as homogenized as possible – database of medicine shortages in Europe. We recorded 22,107 different entries over a five-year period (2018-2023) in a total of 9 European countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Greece, Romania, Austria, and Belgium). This research indicates that Greece is one of the countries that declared the lowest shortages in absolute number during the last five years. At the same time, however, the Greek official data show that even for these few – in relation to the real depiction – Greece has the longest median duration of shortages. 

In the latest related announcement of the Greek National Organization for Medicines (EOF) 148 medicine shortages are reported. ‘’There are much more but they report less. I am just indicatively saying that EOF issued a press release in September 2022 where it was mentioned that in terms of shortages we were in a better era than in 2019. We have already reported for over a year that we have much more (shortages)’’, says Ilias Giannoglou, a Board Member of Athens Pharmaceutical Association. 

According to this Association there were over 400 medicines in shortage in mid March 2023.

“EOF is clueless in terms of shortages. It doesn’t know the market. It does not know which warehouses are exporting and which are not. This year was one of the worst, if not the worst ” adds the president of Athens Pharmaceutical Association, Konstantinos Lourantos. The interview at his pharmacy was interrupted by a customer. We heard him say (Lourantos): “this is in short supply, I had 10 boxes, I gave them all today; maybe you will find somewhere, although I think it would be very difficult”. He then turned to us: “Here is a man who tries to find an antibiotic for his child but there is no Augmentin. I had taken many boxes, some 50, I collected them as if I knew, but now I don’t have any. I mean, if I don’t have it, meaning a pharmacist who had stored a lot, who will?” Lourantos wonders.

The CEO of the Greek pharmaceutical companies Uni-Pharma & InterMed and also SG of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, Ioulia Tseti, considers the under-registration as given. She highlights to MIIR the typical example of “paracetamol, the lack of which this year, had not been officially notified to the Greek National Organization for Medicines (EOF). This fact is due to the circumstance, that many multinational companies do not inform the Agency and prefer instead to pay the relevant fines. Unfortunately, the Agency does not work proactively in our country and in the interest of public health, except when the private sector appears. And the private sector unfortunately works -with very few exceptions- at its own interest’’.

We contacted the President of the EOF, D. Filippou and repeatedly sent our written questions to the organization without receiving any response until the publication of the present.

The Greek “paradox”

The production and distribution of pharmaceutical products is one of the most dynamic branches of the Greek industry. Based on the latest research by the Foundation for Economic & Industrial Research (IOBE) on behalf of the Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (SFEE), in 2020 the sales of drugs in pharmacies and drugstores amounted to €4.6 billion, increased by 3.7% compared to 2019, while the sales in the hospitals and pharmacies amounted to €2.4 billion to be increased by 5.0%.

Drug sales have increased by 80% during the last five years, reaching a €3 billion in 2021. According to the Prodcom (Eurostat) survey, pharmaceutical production in Greece in value (ex-factory) approached €1.7 billion in 2020, increased by €287 million compared to 2019, while compared to the average term of the period 2010-2017 is strengthened by 82%. In addition, drug exports in 2020 increased by 48.3% compared to 2019.

So, if all these indicators are positive, why are there so many medicine shortages?

“There are two reasons: one is, the reduced import of products from some multinationals which are obviously not interested in the Greek market. By an audit we carried out over the last three years, we found out that many multinational companies imported smaller quantities of certain products,” mentions to MIIR the general secretary of the Panhellenic Association of Drugstores, Irini Markaki. And she adds, “the second reason- a very important one indeed-is the illegal export- please pay attention because there is also a legal one – that is done by some, in collaboration with pharmacies and some astute people who collect them”.

According to the analysis of MIIR, it appears that the main causes of the drug shortages in Greece for 2022 are manufacturing or product quality problems (45.3%),  supply chain delays (33.7%) and increased demand (14%) 

Shady dealers and the hoovering

These drugstores usually buy with cash from some pharmacies and then export directly to other countries. According to Ms Markaki, the problem was created during  MoU austerity years in Greece, because of the OECD toolbox that allowed the creation of such ‘’monkey business’’-pharmaceutical warehouses. 

“They create a Private Capital Company and they get easily an approval from the Greek National Organization for Medicines -because they include, for example, a refrigerator- however, without having a high stock of drugs and without having large spaces, while a wholesale pharmaceutical warehouse requires very large spaces. And what do they do? They go and collect medicines from the pharmacies (so in the market they call this “hoovering”) and then they export them, they sell them to each other, they ‘’clean’’ them, they sell them to large pharmaceutical warehouses that export at the end. Or they sell them in black market outside Greece. There, a great deal of damage is done both to the Greek State and to the public health of whatever State they will end up in, because we don’t know under which conditions they are transferred.”

In mid-winter, EOF imposed a temporary lock down on 3 pharmaceutical warehouses that refused inspection. 

However, this is also considered completely insufficient. “A short while ago, the Minister of Health, Mr. Th. Pleuris, issued an announcement about a pharmacy in Athens that had been locked down because the owners refused the inspection. This is not enough, however, as it has been observed that often companies can and do reopen, simply with a different name”, states Ilias Giannoglou of the Athens Pharmaceutical Association.
In fact, those who are “caught in the act” quickly open a new “second chance” warehouse with a different name, just paying a low fee to the Greek state.

However, apart from illegal exports, pharmaceutical manufacturers, traders and pharmacists agree that the low price of the medicine in Greece is part of the problem.

It is noted that only 34% of the total amount of medicines consumed in the country are produced by domestic factories. As Ilias Giannoglou explains, “Greek pharmaceutical companies mainly produce generics. The ones that are exported are the originals. They are multinationals which are imported and re-exported. For example, a company’s insulin comes from Denmark and the company imports 300 pieces and channels them to the Greek market. However, an imported drug is sold by the pharmacy with a multiple profit abroad, than if it is distributed within the country”.

On the other hand, the powerful pharmaceutical industry in Greece – usually immune to the press criticism due to high advertising expenditure – also has a shared responsibility. Despite the inadequacy of checks by the EOF on drugstores, pharmaceutical companies often do not disclose in real time the quantities of drugs they distribute per pharmacy. Some companies do not even disclose the period of the actual shortage, which is critical information needed by legal pharmacies, pharmacies and certainly patients. 

In addition, according to the president of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association, Apostolos Valtas,  “fake shortages are created at the responsibility of companies at critical time periods as a bargaining tool to put pressure on the price committee in order to achieve better pricing.”

Under the legislative framework, pharmaceutical companies must have 3 months’ stock (plus 25% for foreigners and tourists) and any shortages must be declared 3 months in advance. “No company does that. And companies have never been audited or fined for that. Let’s not fool ourselves. The pharmaceutical industry always has a huge power towards any government and has a lot of money to push to the market, either directly or indirectly” says Irini Markaki to MIIR.

The blame game among the key players of the pharmaceutical industry can last forever. At the same time, however,  people in need of their medicines feel more insecure. 

Eleftheria had not managed to find her medicine until the publication of the present. As a substitute, she takes another drug that does not fully aplly to a proper treatment, while following the advice of her endocrinologist, she has adjusted her diet to cover the substances she is lacking.

Less money for health

The total funding for health expenditure in Greece fell by 25.9% in the period 2010-2020, while in the EU it increased by 20.7% in the same time period (source: IOBE, SFEE, The pharmaceutical market in Greece: Facts & figures 2021). The public out-of-hospital pharmaceutical expenditure suffered a significant decrease of 60.8% in the period 2009-2021. The funding decrease for health expenditure in Greece is in an opposite direction from the whole EU, but also from the southern Mediterranean countries subset.

The government, unable or unwilling to control the situation, often throws the ball of blame to doctors and patients. Indicative was the statement of the Minister of Health, Thanos Pleuris at the beginning of this year: “some parents buy more non-prescription drugs and doctors may sometimes prescribe antibiotics in excess, providing an incentive for people to stock medecins at home due to fear of shortages”. This statement provoked intense reactions from the opposition and many pharmaceutical associations.

Medicines may indeed be cheaper in Greece compared to the European average (although the continuous decline in purchasing power must be taken into account), may the EU indeed urgently need a bold patient-centred policy based on its needs of public health with the return of production to its territory, but it is the responsibility of the Greek State and the government to ensure transparency in the data of deficiencies and accountability throughout the chain of the pharmaceutical industry.

Before the shortages peak and before accusing parents of stocking medicines, many other actions should have been taken: preventive measures, transparent information with harmonized and detailed benchmarks, imposing deterrent sanctions on pharmaceutical companies and traders and banning parallel exports in time and for as long as it takes. To the question why this measure is almost always imposed with delay or not at all, a probable answer is that no government wants to reduce the index of exports, which add turnover to the country’s GDP.

As for the patients, especially for those who don’t trust the generics, as usual they are asked to bear the consequences through alchemy and prayers.

Read the first part of the MIIR investigation:  (Why) Europe is running out of Meds

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

At the Greek Consulate in Istanbul, one morning in 2016, Erkan, a Turkish citizen of Kurdish origin, crosses the threshold of the building to address the Greek authorities. He was seeking a visa to enter Greece in order to flee Turkey at a time when the Erdogan regime was stepping up persecution, particularly against the leadership and members of the opposition HDP party and its Kurdish supporters. The Greek consular authority, however, rejected the visa request and Erkan was forced to remain in Turkey.

Οrestiada Evros, 4 years later. Erkan was arrested at the Greek-Turkish border as he attempted to enter Greek territory and was taken to court. The court sentenced him to 4 years in prison without suspension and a 10,000 euro fine on charges of re-entering the country. But Erkan had not re-entered Greece.

What had happened? In front of Greek judges, Erkan sought asylum from Greece for persecution by the Erdogan regime, but was told that his name was on the National List of Unwanted Aliens (EKANA) and the Schengen Information System (SIS II, the largest information exchange system between Schengen countries), with a note that he had been banned from entering the country for 7 years. Because of his inclusion on these lists, he was taken first to Komotini prison and then to Corfu prison.

“We were trying to find out what had really happened” recounts Erkan’s lawyer and Human Rights 360 attorney, Eugenia Kouniaki. “My client had never entered Greece before and was suddenly convicted of re-entering the country. Initially, I contacted the police authorities, the Director of the Asylum Service in Athens, where he replied that my client had been included in the EKANA and SIS II because his visa had been rejected by the Consulate in Istanbul.”

 The truth was quite simply to be found in the operation of the Single European Visa Information System (VISA-VIS) and SIS II. The Greek consulate that processed Erkan’s application entered the visa refusal in the VIS system and in SIS II at the same time. From then on, this record was enough to get him on his way to prison, even if he sought international protection.

“Even when I asked for his removal from the undesirable list and SIS II, as Erkan was an asylum seeker, the Greek police refused,” Kouniaki describes. “Apart from the fact that my client did not know that he was on the list, when we tried to find out why his visa was refused in 2016, we received the vague answer ‘for falsifying some documents’. When we attempted to find out what documents were claimed to have been falsified, we could not check what they were. Fortunately, in the appeal that we filed for a delay in implementing the sentence, the judges accepted our arguments, and after a year he was released from prison.”

However, after all this unfair treatment and imprisonment, he preferred to leave the country “because he believed that he would never find justice,” Kouniaki concludes.

Burning fingers to avoid identification in EURODAC

Erkan’s story may sound outrageous, but unfortunately it is not the only one linked to the consequences of surveillance technologies and biometric data systems for migrants. In the report “Technological Testing Grounds: migration management experiments and reflections from the ground up” (EDRi, Refugee Law Lab, November 2020), author Petra Molnar, a lawyer and member of EDRi (European Digital Rights), has collected a multitude of interviews with asylum seekers in Brussels who came into contact with mobility control systems during their journey to safety in Europe.

Caleb, a married man in his 30s, describes his experience of the asylum process by saying he felt “like a piece of meat with no life, just fingerprints and iris scans”. Another migrant, Esche, describes her encounter with drones in the Mediterranean and the English Channel with a devastating quote the moment she saw them in the sky: “now we have flying computers instead of more asylum”.

The most unpleasant story is told by Negassi, a 20-year-old from Ethiopia: ‘I am tired and I want to go to England’ he says after being stranded in Brussels for nearly two years, undocumented, and earlier the same in Nuremberg for 5 years. But this is not his first time in Belgium, as he was deported to Germany before when he was arrested in a park in Brussels, where he was sleeping rough. When his biometric data was taken by the Belgian police, his fingerprints showed a hit on the EURODAC system, which stores and identifies the fingerprints of asylum seekers, identifying him as a first-time asylum seeker in Germany. So they sent him back because of Dublin II, which stipulates that the first host country has to process the claim.

Negassi acknowledges that the process of collecting biometric data is invasive to the body, but asks: “How can I refuse when the police handcuff me, take me to the station and force me to give my fingerprints?” he tells Molnar. He has friends who have gone so far as to burn their fingers to alter their fingerprints and avoid identification. “However, that doesn’t solve the problem” for Negassi, as no identification usually means a longer detention period.

“There is a very important aspect that is not discussed enough in the public debate,” Petra Molnar tells us, “and it concerns the fact that these surveillance technologies cause trauma to people who are not even familiar with the technology. The migrants I spoke to all had a strong belief within them that they were experiencing racist and discriminatory treatment through their contact with these systems.”

This is why it is even more important, he continues, “in terms of the rampant use of these technologies, that there is accountability, oversight and governance. We need to focus on what kind of governance structures need to be developed to ensure that these technologies, which are a human-rights risk, do not cause trauma to people.”

The accountability part, however, does not seem to be enhanced by the way these systems are developed. The involvement of private companies in the security and defence industries further complicates matters. “There is a very problematic relationship of private companies and state institutions working together under the guise that states themselves cannot develop these technologies in-house”, points out Molnar. “So huge public resources are directed to big companies to develop them. But also from a legal point of view, it creates the problem of what some call ‘responsibility laundering’ when something goes wrong. In these cases, as we have seen, the state says ‘it is not our problem because we did not develop this technology’. And the private company for its part retorts that ‘the state management of the tools is to blame’.”

But public budgets for the industrial complex of migration management and border control are substantial, Molnar points out. “Of all that money in such a problematic technology that inflicts trauma, imagine if it went to education, legal services, housing. Why don’t states, instead of pouring so much money into surveillance technologies, think about how to use it for social inclusion?”

The European Border Surveillance system (Eurosur) and the money for drones

Perhaps the most interesting system for migration issues is Eurosur, which produces maps of both territorial/land and maritime borders. It is operated by Frontex and allows for the exchange of maps between states regarding border controls at sea. “The development of Eurosur was launched in 2007, but it reaches the European Parliament for the first time at the end of 2012, after hundreds of millions have been spent and its design has been completed, effectively presenting the institution with a fait accompli. Due to the lack of transparency, the research in the relevant directorates of the European Commission is largely captured by the priorities of the security-industry complex”, journalist Apostolis Fotiadis reported in his book “Border Merchants”.

When it was first developed it was promoted as a “humanitarian technology”, a system that would allow the authorities of each member state to conduct search and rescue operations. The idea was that “we use maps, we get information from satellites and also from drones, to perceive migratory flows, for example from Africa to Europe, so that we can rescue people at sea”. The problem is that Eurosur creates so-called pre-frontier pictures. These are maps that focus on the area before the border, before a ship arrives at the maritime border, for example Greece. “Mainly they do it to organise pull-back operations, because for example the Italian authorities can share data with the Libyan authorities so that the Libyan authorities can take back the migrants. They know that push-backs are not allowed, so the solution is pull-backs. That’s why Libya is funded,” explains Georgios Glouftios, a lecturer at the University of Trento, to MIIR.

For the creation of the pre-frontier maps, Frontex also cooperates with the European Union Satellite Centre (EU SatCen), which provides it with satellite imagery, aerial photographs and other related services. The Eurosur database also records incidents occurring at the EU maritime borders, although member states have not been obliged until now to upload data from incidents at border checkpoints in a systematic and organised manner (this changed with an implementing regulation in April 2021). Which means that there is no complete and methodical recording of incidents, blurring the overall picture of incidents at the external borders. A fact that is also admitted by the European Commission in the Eurosur evaluation report (September 2018).

Frontex’s second report in 2018 on the operation of Eurosur recorded over 184,000 incidents in the period from December 2013 to the beginning of 2018, with the vast majority (147,827) relating to migratory flows.

In February 2022, the French government announced that it would install additional cameras along the Channel coast to help monitor migrants hoping to cross the stretch of water to the UK. The cameras are being paid for by the British government. In December 2021, the Italian navy delivered a new shipment of containers with surveillance equipment to Libya to monitor migration in the Mediterranean (source: Altreconomia research magazine, February 2021 issue). Additional “trap cameras” for cars and people have also been placed at or near the border between Italy and Slovenia along the so-called Balkan route.

Eyes in the sky

Frontex confirms that it uses “a set of services falling under Eurosur, the information exchange framework designed to improve the management of Europe’s external borders” (source: infomigrants.net, “Digital borders: EU increases use of technology to monitor migration”, 18.2.2022). It states that most of this monitoring is carried out “by aerial surveillance by manned and unmanned aircraft, with satellite imagery devices and collection of vessel positions through positioning systems”.

According to a recent in-depth survey (“Funds for Fortress Europe: spending by Frontex and EU-LISA”, January 2022) by the non-profit organisation Statewatch, Frontex spends most of its annual budget on maritime and aerial surveillance, alongside deportations (chartered and scheduled flights for the return of migrants). According to data analysis carried out by Statewatch, between 2014-2020 Frontex together with the European agency EU-LISA (which oversees large-scale mobility-control information systems) spent a combined €1.9 billion on contracts with private IT companies and the security and defence industry. Of this money about half a billion (€434 million) was managed by Frontex with more than €100 million going to contracts with private companies related to air surveillance. This included a €50 million contract with the Airbus consortium – one of the leading trans-European companies in the aerospace and defence industry – and the Israeli company Elbit, which supplies 85% of the Israeli army’s drones.

In the same period, Frontex seems to have had a profitable relationship with three other air surveillance service providers: the Canadian CAE Aviation, the British Diamond-Executive Aviation (DEA) and the Dutch EASP Air. As a consortium they won contracts worth a total of €57 million (not counting the contracts they have signed alone for other security and control services to Frontex).

The same trend continued in 2021 with €84 million – i.e. one sixth of Frontex’s annual budget – going to air surveillance services.

In the deportation process, Frontex has worked with the Polish eTravel SA on €50 million contracts to provide travel services (booking and ticketing services) for the scheduled return flights. It has also worked with the British multinational Air Charter Service Limited and the Norwegian AS Aircontact in flight chartering for the same purpose.

London-based Privacy International in July 2021 published its findings on how an increasing number of companies are “developing satellites capable of tracking and selling their data to border agencies”. The organisation concluded that while “such surveillance can save lives, it can also facilitate pullbacks or be used to persecute asylum seekers”.

The use of all these surveillance technologies also has a deeper consequence, underscores Antonella Napolitano, network coordinator of Privacy International. “On the one hand, it contributes to the criminalization of the migrant’s person, and at the same time it turns him into a data hub, from the beginning of the journey from the country of origin to the evaluation of biometric data in the EU. The aim is to fully record his movement and track him until the next steps within the European area. Indeed, if he is found trapped because of a wrong recording or decision within these systems where his data is stored, this error follows him for the rest of his life.”

This notion is not unconnected to the risk of extending surveillance to the whole range of travel, whether for tourism or work. Moreover, Napolitano points out, “the very interoperability of the systems is a good example of how a system developed to monitor migratory movements can then be extended to everyone, as these systems are progressively extended to all travellers entering the European area, but also to EU citizens moving within the EU”. 

“Being potentially considered a ‘criminal by default’, a concept reflected in the management of surveillance technologies, cannot leave anyone indifferent,” Napolitano concludes.  

Passenger Name Record: the monitoring of intra-EU movements

The Passenger Name Record (PNR) concerns the recording of all data of passengers moving within European territory, regardless of whether they come from a third country. What does this system collect?  Name, nationality, when we travelled, where from, where to, our email, our address. Apart from that, one can find out our travelling companions, possibly some data related to our stay such as hotel reservations, whether we travelled for business or personal reasons. It can probably even find out in an extreme case our religion, as the system even records the meal we ate during our flight. This meal may contain ‘interesting’ facts about us, e.g. if we eat kosher we are Jewish, if we don’t eat pork it means we are Muslim. It may also reveal if someone has allergies.

The PNR is accessible to the police authorities of each country. “And this is where the problems start. There is a European directive on how personal data can be processed through the PNR system. This European legislation must be transposed into national law in each country. The problem is that we have some failures in the transposition of this directive in different countries, such as Greece,” says lawyer Kostas Kakavoulis, a member of Homo Digitalis, to MIIR. As he explains, “the European directive says that each member state shall establish or designate an authority which is responsible for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of serious terrorist offences. So we are talking about an authority that is either established from the outset or exists and is given this competence. In Greece, the legislature has given this competence to a department within the Directorate of Information Management and Analysis of the Greek Police. So we are not talking about an authority but a directorate of the Greek police. It is absurd for the body which holds the data, the police, to ask for access to this data from a department within the police. If it is subject to hierarchical control or if there are pressures in general, it is rather doubtful that a department of the Greek police will refuse to provide other departments of the Greek police with data that they need, even if it were necessary to do so. In France this is not the case, as a special independent authority has been set up for PNR data. In Greece any police force can have uncontrolled access to PNR data anywhere, anytime. There is no record anywhere of who requested which data, when and for what purpose. And there is no classified access policy. You only need to be a member of the police force to access this data.”

In Greece, the organisation Homo Digitalis (member of EDRi), in an open letter to the parliament, underlines that “the data in question can reveal the pattern of a person’s movements, such as the time of travel, the place of departure and arrival, his/her email and address, as well as a person’s travelling companions, but possibly even related hotel reservation data, etc., thus revealing information on business or personal travel and even the person’s social circle, such as friends or companions”.

The organisation notes that in the draft law submitted in 2018 in Greece there was:

• lack of a system for recording access to PNR data
• lack of prior judicial control over the provision of PNR data to pre-trial and other authorities
• the retention period of PNR data is not limited to the strictly necessary period

Four years later, the same shortcomings remain.

The organisation stressed that PNR data of minors transferred should be described clearly and accurately, and that any data transferred should not reveal either religious beliefs or information about the passenger’s health.

In part one of MIIR’s investigation: The ecosystem of European biometric monitoring and surveillance data

In part three of MIIR’s investigation: the features of artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems in the new mobility-screening regime, and the private contractors building and marketing them in the EU.

*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

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.