*The investigation was published in the Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper on Friday, August 8, 2025.

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. 

“Nature is blamed for failings that are man’s
and well-run rivers have to change their plans”
Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, novelist (1890-1971)

“The flood has changed our lives. My children are scared every time it rains. My son had a panic attack when the bridges in Faenza were closed recently, because he thought the same thing would happen. And I can’t help but look at the river every time I drive by. I live from day to day now. Everything can change in an instant. You know, I lost everything in half an hour”. Francesca Placci, 42, a cook, lives in the Italian city of Faenza, in the province of Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna. Faenza, located 50 kilometres south-east of Bologna, was flooded three times in 18 months during the 2023-2024 biennium.

As in Thessaly and Valencia, the inhabitants of this Italian city are still living with fear and anxiety about the future after this triple shock.  “Every time it rains, I am afraid. Our confidence is gone. We no longer know what we can rely on. This place is not safe. Nothing will ever be the same again. My husband is more tired now, more silent. In our community we continue to help each other, but the state has never been there for us. Instead, all we got was a mess of bureaucracy and crumbs of financial support. We have learned to rely only on ourselves and the people around us,” says Simona Bacchilega, 54.

Her voice echoes and joins those of the inhabitants of Palamas Karditsa, Mandra, Volos and Pelion, the neighbourhoods of Valencia in Spain, the Danube regions of Hungary and Slovakia, in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saarland in Germany, in the provinces of Karlovac and Sisk-Moslavina in Croatia and in dozens of other affected areas.

Thessaly, September 2023, photo: Marios Lolos 

The deadliest natural disaster

Floods are the most common natural disaster. They account for 44% of all natural disasters worldwide and cause almost half of all deaths. Today, 1.81 billion people (23% of the world’s population) are considered to be directly exposed to the risk of severe flooding. Their frequency has more than doubled since 2004, scientists say, due to the acceleration of the hydrological cycle caused by anthropogenic climate change. 

Over the past 30 years, floods in Europe have affected 5.5 million people, caused more than 3,000 deaths and resulted in economic losses of more than €170 billion. But these are just journalistic estimates.

How many people have actually died in floods in each region of Europe over the last decade? How many and which specific areas in each country and region have been affected, and which infrastructure has been hit hardest, especially in the last two years? And how can we protect ourselves effectively? The publicly available scientific data on floods in Europe is fragmentary, incomplete and uninformative.

MIIR’s month-long cross-border journalistic data research – unique in Europe – as part of EDJNET, has managed to combine data from three different open databases to create the first comprehensive pan-European database on floods, recording the number of floods, flood victims and flood deaths in all European regions from 2014 to 2024. 

In addition, we have created a separate database based on satellite data for the last two years (2023-2024), which accurately records the extent of flooding and its impact on land and infrastructure in all European regions of 17 Member States.

The devastating impact in numbers

Between 2014 and 2024, data collected by Copernicus, the EM-DAT public database and the Hanze database show that at least 681,076 people were affected by floods in 24 European countries. However, the actual number of people affected is higher as data is not available for all floods. 

Based on the existing data we have analysed, at least 1,579 people have died directly as a result of floods in Europe over the last decade.

Together with Michalis Diakakis, a hydrogeologist and assistant professor at the University of Athens, they study flood fatalities in Europe, having contributed to the most reliable (because it includes all events with at least one fatality) large-scale database on flood fatalities in the Euro-Mediterranean region (Flood Fatalities from the Euro-Mediterranean region FFEM-DB). The number of deaths in 14 Euro-Mediterranean countries over the last 35 years exceeds 3000.

Excess mortality

The official death toll in Thessaly in 2023 was 17. However, a recent study by the Centre for Research and Training in Public Health, Health Policy and Primary Health Care, published by the Greek daily Efsyn. (“Plains mourns 335 dead, not 17 from Daniel”, 16.3.2025), shows that the actual total number of deaths was 20 times higher in the first quarter after the floods. In total, 335 people died within three months, mostly from cardiovascular and/or respiratory problems. 

As noted by meteo.gr (K. Papagiannaki, K. Lagovardos, G. Kyros, 18/10/2024), in the last 45 years Greece has experienced 70 deadly floods due to heavy rainfall, resulting in 190 deaths. There is an alarming trend: the number of deaths caused by floods is increasing over time. In the last decade, for example, half of all recorded deaths have occurred in the last 45 years. 

According to the Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development of the National Observatory of Athens, in the Balkans as a whole, floods with more than 10 fatalities occur every 6.5 years, while floods with more than 22 fatalities occur every 12 years.

Our research shows that in the last two years, 17 European countries have experienced 32 floods, affecting a total of 427.336,2 hectares – an area 1.5 times the size of Luxembourg – according to satellite data from Copernicus Emergency Management Mapping. 

The area flooded in Europe over the past two years is almost twice the size of Greater London and larger than Rome, Paris and Berlin combined.

Analysis of the 61 affected areas shows that provincial areas suffered the most extensive flooding, with some 138.663 hectares flooded. Similarly, 98.447 hectares were affected in intermediate (semi-urban) areas and 88.468 hectares in urban areas.

Thessaly, September 2023, photo: Marios Lolos 

The largest flood in Europe in the last two years started on 5 September 2023 in the Thessaly region of Greece, affecting almost 1,223,750 hectares, of which 92% was agricultural land. The storm directly claimed the lives of 17 people, affected 44,000 inhabitants in Karditsa, Trikala, Magnesia and Larissa and resulted in the death of more than 200,000 animals.

The actual extent of the flood in Thessaly

Until now, the area flooded in Thessaly seemed to be less than 1 million hectares (72.000 hectares was the first official report from the Athens Observatory), but our analysis shows that the actual extent of the disaster is much greater than what has been reported in the press (up to 80.000 hectares).

It turns out that the total area affected in the whole of Thessaly was 122.374,7 hectares, which is more than 50% more than the initial estimates). This is because our measurement includes the ‘flood footprint’ recorded by the Copernicus satellites – areas where water was present but had receded by the time the satellite image was taken. As Copernicus told MIIR, “we assume with a very high probability that a flood has occurred where traces of it are detected in the satellite images”.

 Snapshot from the Copernicus website, showing the diagonal lines of the Thessaly flood track on 9 September 2023. Retrieved 25.3.2025.

Our data shows that Thessaly also experienced the most significant damage to the transport network in the whole of Europe over the last two years, with 1,590 km of roads and almost 149 km of rail infrastructure damaged. 

Germany has been the worst performer in Europe in this category over the last two years, with 209.8 km of long-distance power lines and cables and 117.7 km of local power lines and cables affected.

Flooding of the Saar River, Saarland Germany, 18.05.2024. Source: Berit Kessler / Shutterstock.com

Flooding in Valencia, Dana, October 2024. Source: Guillermo Gutiérrez Carrascal / El Confidencial.

These data show that inland floods at municipal and provincial level, often caused by heavy rainfall, overflowing rivers or poor drainage, have affected a larger area than coastal floods.

However, areas close to the water appear to be more vulnerable to flooding, with the majority of floods in a decade occurring in coastal areas, particularly in Spain, France and Italy.

As was shown for the floods in a parallel investigation by the Spanish El Confidencial, the areas most affected in Valencia have lower levels of income per capita and, at the same time, the houses built there, where land is cheaper, are less prepared to cope with this type of event. The five Spanish provinces with the highest number of buildings in flood-prone areas at risk of flooding are, in order, Murcia, Seville, Valencia, Alicante and Tarragona. 

Flooding in Valencia, Dana, October 2024. Source: Guillermo Gutiérrez Carrascal / El Confidencial.

The last three and a half decades have been among the most flood-rich periods in Europe in the last 500 years. Scientists have shown (Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years, Nature, 2000) that this period differs from other similar flood-rich periods in terms of magnitude, air and sea temperatures and seasonality. The summer of 2024 was the warmest ever recorded in Europe and worldwide. Note that for each additional degree Celsius of global average temperature, the intensity of precipitation increases by about 7%.

The biggest problem is that sea temperatures in the Mediterranean have risen. The critical limit is a water temperature of 26 degrees Celsius. “When this is exceeded, the meteorological system that passes over an area is enriched with enormous additional moisture, and all this acts as both an accelerator and a magnifier of the phenomenon,” explains Professor Nikitas Mylopoulos, a professor at the University of Thessaly. 

Such a condition leads to the famous Omega cyclones, as happened with Daniel in Thessaly. “In the same region, two phenomena that are supposed to occur every 500 and 1000 years have occurred in just three years. This automatically means that all the alarm bells have to go off, because the return periods change, all the statistical distributions change and, of course, the whole way of coping and planning changes”.

 “Governments insist on dealing only with the day after the disaster (post disaster), instead of taking preventive measures (risk-cost benefit). Between 2017-2021, Greece was given about €100 million in flood compensation alone. Only for Janus (a Mediterranean cyclone that hit the Mediterranean and mainly Greece in September 2020), 38 million euros were given, 7 million euros in state compensation and 31 million euros in insurance compensation,” notes Katerina Papagiannaki, a scientist at the National Observatory of Athens. 

The same is said by Nikitas Mylopoulos, professor at the University of Thessaly, director of the Laboratory of Hydrology and Analysis of Water Systems, making it clear that the only way to deal with the situation is to draw up a Holistic Flood Protection Plan with a series of projects that will “cooperate” with each other. 

Smart dams

“Flood management is very important,” says Mylopoulos. “It relates to how we with our projects will direct, guide the flood volumes as safely as possible to avoid major disasters. This is done first of all with the mountain hydrology projects: small earthen dams high up in the mountains, where the phenomenon starts, in the small streams. So that’s where you put the first stop. Second needed, smaller small and medium-sized dams and dikes downstream. And not the pharaonic big dams. Small dams, but set up smartly, in the areas that actually do the job. Thirdly, reforestation is needed throughout the region, and enhancing natural protection, vegetation cover is crucial in flood mitigation. And, of course, we must finally provide for flood zones, according to their risk, which are usually currently either built-up areas or fields of intensive farming. These zones must be returned with lighter land uses. The rivers must be given back their old meanderings, which play a role in reducing the risk. 

Θεσσαλία, Σεπτέμβριος 2023, κακοκαιρία Daniel, φωτό: Μάριος Λώλος 

Simona Bacchilega, a worker in the municipality of Faenza, on the evening of 16 May 2023 was receiving messages from friends to leave her home. 

“We lived in the centre of the city, ten metres above the surface of the river, and we weren’t worried. We didn’t think the sewers could overflow. Until the moment we heard a strange sound coming from the bathroom and there was a terrible stench. Suddenly we saw water coming from the yard, despite the sandbags my husband and neighbor had placed. The water was coming in non-stop. I quickly grabbed a backpack, put in clothes, a flashlight, water. We went out into the street. I realized that my water was reaching my waist.We spent the entire first night awake, sitting in the dark. The power had been out since 9 o’clock at night. Looking outside, I could see the water rising in my car. “Not the car,” I thought. “I just unloaded it!”

The river will take it all away’

“I was thinking of my aunt who used to tell us, ‘The river will take it all away’,” Simona recalls. “The elderly neighbor across the street was talking to us from his window. His wife was on dialysis, and all night long we exchanged glances. He was a professor, a great man. He lost his entire library. I used to watch him look at his books in the water. The next day helicopters were flying all the time, and we didn’t know what was happening.”

For a while they stayed with some neighbors. “When we were able to return home, we realized we had to fend for ourselves. No one helped us. If you wanted water, you had to find it yourself. Volunteers and organized help never reached our area. Then we started to clean up.” 18 months later, in September 2024, Faenza, like dozens of areas in central Europe, was flooded again by the Boris storm.

Satellite image of the Italian city of Faenza from ​ESA/NASA, May 2023

That same night, 42-year-old cook Francesca Placci lost what she had painstakingly built over a lifetime. “My apartment was completely submerged, the water reached up to 3 cm from the ceiling,” she says.

Raffaela Paladini, an expert in trauma management after a disaster, visited Faenza as an “emergency psychologist” providing assistance to dozens of people. “Such a situation certainly has a traumatic impact. People who go about their daily lives as we all do, at some point in time find themselves in an emergency situation faced with something that disrupts their daily routine. This interruption initially causes confusion, a sense of disorientation, emptiness and despair. It can then trigger very different emotions, such as anger, rage and guilt.”

Flood in Faenza, Italy, 17 May 2023. Source: Dario Argenti / Shutterstock.com

“We are financially exhausted. Everything needed to be replaced. The frustration was growing as there was no government support. I spent months looking for help, knocking on doors of public services, but in vain. But the worst part was the psychological impact. Every time it rained, I had an anxiety attack. I couldn’t sleep, waking up in the middle of the night to check if the river had swollen again. My mother, who was always strong, began to show signs of dementia. She was no longer the same.”

And for 66-year-old retiree Mirella Emiliani, everything has changed. “I used to pay attention to appearance, I had nice clothes, an organized home. Now, I have nothing. I don’t even have my old photos. The flood has changed my relationships with people. My few real friends did everything they could to help me. Others just disappeared. When it rains, I’m still scared. I think I can’t go through the same thing again. No one warned us in time. Nothing was done right. Now, I live day by day, because I learned that life can change in an instant.” 

However, all the affected people say almost the same thing: “this disaster has changed me, but it has also highlighted the power of solidarity”. Andrea Bazzocchi returned home after 1.5 years of suffering. “We are trying to rebuild our lives, step by step; this experience has taught us a lot, but we cannot live in fear. We move forward with optimism.”

The cross-border data research was organised and coordinated by the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting (MIIR.gr) in the framework of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet).

The data collection, analysis and visualization was carried out by Konstantina Maltepioti. The data analysis was checked by the Deutsche Welle team. The illustrations were created by Louisa Karageorgiou.

A total of 6 EDJNet members participated in the survey, which was conducted from November 2024 to March 2025: MIIR (Greece), Atlatszo (Hungary), Facta (Italy), El Confidencial, Civio (Spain), PressOne (Romania).

The survey was published on 29 March 2025 in www.miir.gr and www.efsyn.gr. 

See the scrollytelling of the survey here.
Read the methodology of the survey here.

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. 

Photo: The spread of the deadly Mati fire in 2018, as it was simulated by the IRIS 2.0 rapid response forecast system.- Source: Meteo.gr, 2021

In the space of just 13 days in July 2023, 470,000 acres of Greek forest were burnt to ashes. Greece’s state machinery is proving inadequate to deal with extreme weather phenomena. In Rhodes, 15% of the entire island was ravaged in the worst fire in decades. From 1 January to 1 August 2023, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), a total of 550,000 hectares were burnt in the 22 largest forest fires. This is more than four times the average amount of land burnt in the years 2006-2022.

In an earlier survey by MIIR in collaboration with WWF on the economics of forest-fire protection we showed that, for the period 2016-2020, only 16.05% of public funds for fire protection were spent on fire prevention. Most, 83.95%, was spent on fire suppression. This ratio has not changed significantly since then: the Greek state has continued to invest in suppression instead of prevention. Another major problem can be found in the state’s inadequate use of scientific data during the fire season.

A typical case is the notorious fire-risk forecast map, which is published daily at 12.30pm by the General Secretariat of Civil Protection, in a rather opaque manner. This map is reproduced by all the media and forms the basis of the national Fire Service’s operational planning. It started to be used in 2003 and is published daily from 1 June to 31 October each year, under the purview of the Civil Protection. However, for twenty years now, none of the experts has known exactly what data and scientific methodology is used to produce this map.

Photo: The Civil Protection’s fire risk forecast map for 18 July, the day the huge fire broke out in Rhodes. The risk level for the island and the rest of the Dodecanese region was placed in the middle of the scale, which is classified as “high”. – Source: Ministry of Climate and Civil Protection.

 Intuition instead of data

“The map circulated by the Civil Protection, whose derivation we do not know, has no scientific sources, does not mention how the different categories are regulated, nor what it takes into account. My assessment is that the Civil Protection map comes out on the basis of simple intuition,” says Kostas Lagovardos, meteorologist and research director at the National Observatory of Athens.

The map’s first drawback, according to experts, is this lack of clarity about the exact scientific data used.

The main problem, however, is that it is issued once a day (covering the next 24 hours) and so does not take into account the very frequent variations in weather conditions during the day. As confirmed in a circular of the Civil Protection, once the map is issued, it does not change in any way.

 Photo: Excerpt from the Circular of the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection on the issue
daily Fire Risk Prediction Map from the G.G.P.P. during the 2023 fire season.

Andrianos Gourbatsis, a lieutenant-general and former deputy chief of the Fire Service, explains: “This is a big mistake, because the meteorological data may get worse, it may get better, so how is it possible not to change the map? What if you issue a hazard index of 3 for tomorrow, and suddenly in the evening the wind comes in, the temperature drops and the hazard becomes 5? This is the biggest disadvantage. There is another issue: the people who issue the map every noon then proceed to get off work, they go home, they do not follow the meteorological data of the National Weather Service.”

Another shortcoming of the map is that it treats entire regions, prefectures and other subdivisions as single units, without taking into account their different climatic conditions as pertaining to fire.

Kostas Lagovardos explains: “On the map, every region has one colour, which has no bearing on reality. For example, the winds in southern Crete are much stronger and have no relation to the winds in northern Crete. So in heavy weather, which is a typical summer event, you have a huge difference in the pyro-meteorological situation within the same prefecture. You can’t have entire regions having the same level of alert everywhere.” This means a dispersal of the firefighting forces on the ground, with all the devastation that might result.

After all, this fire-risk map is directly connected to the operational plan for fighting fires.

In the catastrophic fire in Mati in 2008 (which killed 102 people), the fire-risk map indicated a level of 4 (the maximum is 5). Andrianos Gourbatsis, who is also knowledgeable about the fires in Mati (2018) and Varibobi (2021), elaborates: “The conditions were for an index of 5 at the time. With an index of 4, the Fire Service’s state of readiness was not the maximum. If it had been 5, the Fire Service would have brought out an additional 25 units, from the 86 it had, while more fire stations would have been staffed for more hours, i.e. people would have been more ready.”

The Civil Protection’s Fire Risk Forecast Map for 23 July 2018, the day the deadly fire broke out in Mati. Source: Ministry of Climate and Civil Protection.

In the catastrophic fire in Mati in 2008 (which killed 102 people), the fire-risk map indicated a level of 4 (the maximum is 5). Andrianos Gourbatsis, who is also knowledgeable about the fires in Mati (2018) and Varibobi (2021), elaborates: “The conditions were for an index of 5 at the time. With an index of 4, the Fire Service’s state of readiness was not the maximum. If it had been 5, the Fire Service would have brought out an additional 25 units, from the 86 it had, while more fire stations would have been staffed for more hours, i.e. people would have been more ready.”

When there is a category 4 or 5 risk in an area, the Fire Service must effect an aerial surveillance. If the patrol sees a fire, the Fire Service must intervene immediately. In the catastrophic fire in Varibobi in the summer of 2021, two Air-Tractors were patrolling the area from 11 am because of the danger index. Gourbatsis notes that “Mr Hardalias [deputy minister for civil protection at the time] gave an order for them to land at 13.00 and stand by ‘if needed’. The fire in Varypobi subsequently broke out a kilometre from the airport. The planes had been on standby for 20 minutes, and precious time was lost as they got back in the air.”

Civil Protection ignoring the National Observatory

Phoebus Theodorou was for years the person who signed off on the maps of the General Secretariat of Civil Protection. He is a forester, not a meteorologist. He retired some time ago, but according to MIIR’s information, he remains an advisor to the Ministry of Climate and Civil Protection and continues to be involved in the publication of the disputed map. It is no longer approved by him, but by the scientific team at the Civil Protection secretariat. The individuals who make up this team have not been identified.

Andrianos Gourbatsis argues that “Civil Protection is stuck with the charter that was issued in 1995 when the service started. A lot of things need to change. On the weekend, these Civil Protection officials are at home, yet they still issue a map. This is not serious. They check EFFIS data every day, they see where it ‘blackens’ and issue the map accordingly”. Since the 2000s, as deputy chief of the Greek fire service, he has been asking politicians to have the map issued instead by Greece’s meteorological agency, EMY. His suggestion has gone unheeded and EMY is now doing even less work than before. It used to issue a special daily map of the conditions in the burnt areas.

Phoebus Theodorou, the official formerly in charge of issuing the Civil Protection maps, has claimed (GrTimes.gr, 08/06/2021) that they are based on the Forest Fire Weather Index (FFWI) of the Canadian Forest Service, as well as other geographic information systems and software. The National Observatory of Athens refutes this assertion. Kostas Lagovardos, at the Observatory, is categoric: “It can’t be using the Canadian index, because if it did, it would produce the results that we do. Southern and northern Crete would almost never have the same hazard index when they have different scores of 4 and 5 on the Beaufort scale.”

We contacted Phoebus Theodorou in order to answer questions about this, but to no avail. In addition, we sent written questions to the General Secretariat of Civil Protection but received no response by the time this article was published.

At the moment, the most authoritative daily fire-risk map in Greece seems to be that of the National Observatory of Athens. It is based on the Canadian pyro-meteorological index and takes into account temperature, humidity, wind, drought, how many days it has not rained, in order to produce a number to quantify risk. It offers a better analysis than the corresponding Civil Protection map, since it reaches a 2×2 km level of resolution in each region of the country. However, the fire service – at least officially – bases its planning on the Civil Protection map.

Vassiliki Kotroni, director of research at the Athens Observatory, comments that “we don’t know how the Observatory data is used by the General Secretariat for Civil Protection. We do know that our weather monitoring uses a network of 550 weather stations that we operate throughout the country. Since this data is freely available, it is possible that the Civil Protection monitors our stations. But this is not based on a memorandum of understanding, on any formalised system that would oblige us to operate in a certain way. We are doing this without any obligations. In a properly organised country, things should be a little different.”

Dr Kotroni is the scientific director of the Observatory’s Meteo team, which has pioneered a mechanism to forecast the spread of fires. Called IRIS, the system is innovative at both Greek and European levels. It aims to facilitate rapid responses to active forest fires. Knowing the location and time of the start of a fire, the system can, within 20 minutes, provide a forecast of how the fire front will develop over the next few hours. Within half an hour, it can provide a forecast for the next 24 hours. The system takes into account both the meteorology and the changing weather conditions caused by the fire itself. In 2019-2020 it was successfully used in cooperation with the Civil Protection and the Fire Service in over 200 forest fires. However, for two years now, explains Dr Kotroni, “for reasons we do not know, the cooperation has faded away, and unfortunately since 2021 it has not been sought by the Civil Protection or the Fire Service”.

Although it was available, IRIS was not used during the major fires in Varibobi and Evia in 2021. In a post after the fire in Varibobi, Meteo.gr stressed that it had carried out an “ex-post forecast”, adding that “the forecast that IRIS 2.0 could have provided operationally if it had been requested is very close to the actual spread of the fire”. Today, the IRIS system is still being developed with the Athens Observatory’s own resources, without any involvement of the state. It was not used by the Civil Protection even during the catastrophic fires of July this year.

The video shows the spread of the Varybompi forest fire in 2021, as simulated vy the IRIS 2.0 rapid forecasting system. Source: Meteo.gr

This material is published in the context of the “FIRE-RES” project co-funded by the European Union (EU). The EU is in no way responsible for the information or views expressed within the framework of the project. Responsibility for the content lies solely with EDJNet. Go to the FIRE-RES page

By 27 December 2022, according to UNHCR  figures, 7,896,825 refugees from Ukraine had been registered in Europe, of which 4,885,650 had been granted temporary protection status.

As the EU automatically grants residence permits and visas to Ukrainian passport holders, Ukrainians are given priority for housing and social services. At the same time, however, as a recent New York Times report  showed, many of the remaining refugee camps and asylum seeker centres are being abandoned to their fate by European governments. The war in Ukraine has dramatically increased the number of asylum seekers in Europe, but has crowded out refugees from other war zones. Activists denounce the existence of a two-tier system, which is unfair to non-Ukrainian asylum seekers, who are presumed to be living in appalling conditions. In Berlin, limited refugee housing capacity has forced city officials to evict some of the Afghan refugees to make room for those arriving from Ukraine. In Brussels, asylum seekers are forced to spend the night on the street. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Belgian government to offer shelter to an asylum seeker from Equatorial Guinea who had been living on the street since July. In southern Germany, mayors are settling refugees in gyms and concert halls, while in the Netherlands the government faced legal action over inhumane detention conditions in refugee camps. A Dutch court ruled a few days ago in the first instance that the Dutch government must provide all refugees with care similar to that given to Ukrainian refugees.

In Greece, pushbacks at land and sea borders have become de facto government policy, according to the UNHCR and numerous humanitarian organisations (but not according to the government). Fortunately, arms were opened wide for Ukrainian refugees, with little in the way of racist or intolerant rhetoric. A small detail: the refugees are white, European, Orthodox Christians. And most importantly, they want to leave again.

Most of the people who started arriving in the country last spring were women and children. There were also some elderly people. It is the same picture in other European countries. Ukrainian men up to the age of 60 are, moreover, banned from leaving their country. Although there is no conscription at the moment, those of conscriptable age must remain in Ukraine, with the exception of men with three or more children. Those who chose Greece as a destination country did so mainly because of the significant Ukrainian community, where they might have had relatives and acquaintances. Most came by road and air via Poland, while others arrived via Romania by bus. Those in Mariupol and the eastern regions of the country went first to Georgia and from there came by plane. The last official count on 8 August reported that a total of 75,945 Ukrainians have fled to Greece since the beginning of the war, of whom 19,760 are children (up to 17 years old). The peak of the Ukrainian refugee wave in Greece did not occur in the first months of the war, but rather in July.

“Greece generously opened its doors to the Ukrainians. Anyone who wanted to come came without any problem at all. At this point I don’t think we will have any new wave of refugees,” says translator Olga Sapolayeva, who used to work at the Greek consulate in Mariupol.

Few, however, apply for asylum in Greece. In 2022, Greece recorded only one case of a Ukrainian who obtained international protection. Meanwhile 20,420 people have obtained temporary protection status for one year, which was due to expire in March 2023 but is now renewed for another year until March 2024. Of the 20,420 with temporary protection, just 212 were staying in shelters at the end of October. (125 in Elefsina and 87 in Serres).

At the same time, data collected by MIIR from the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum identified only 49 cases of Ukrainians who applied for and obtained subsidiary protection status in 2022 (24 in August, 10 in September and 15 in October). Subsidiary protection status has similar characteristics to temporary protection and the same duration of one year, but refugees tend to avoid it as they usually have to surrender their passports. Subsidiary protection is an international protection for people who seek asylum but do not qualify as refugees.

In the European Union, a person eligible for subsidiary protection status is defined as a third-country national or stateless person who would face a risk of serious harm if returned to his or her country of origin (torture, death penalty, degrading treatment, serious personal threat to life, etc.).

“Many times people who have been granted subsidiary protection are left without any passport. You hand over the passport and then they say, ‘go and get a certificate from your country saying that you are indeed a citizen of Afghanistan, for example, and that you should normally be issued a passport by the authorities of your country’. But Afghanistan, for example, does not issue passports. So a lot of people have found themselves stranded in Greece. Ukrainians choose temporary protection because of the passport and the fact that they want to go back,” says lawyer Hara Katsigiannis from the Greek Council for Refugees.

As our translator Olga Sapolayeva explains, many Ukrainians apply for housing – as they are entitled to it under the temporary-protection status – but they usually do not choose a state structure to stay in. The majority stay with relatives and friends in Greece, with a view to returning to Ukraine or moving to another European country. Most women seek work in the service sector, while many are working online at the jobs they already had. A few have become interpreters and mediators who help other Ukrainian women, while those who do not know Greek or English take care of children and the elderly.

“Clearly the Greek state treated the Ukrainians differently from other refugees. This is discriminatory treatment, this lack of equality between asylum seekers and applicants for temporary protection. But in Greece they attribute it to the European directive”, says X. Katsigiannis. “In essence it’s as if they are saying temporary protection is something ephemeral, it will all be over. Some [Ukrainians] get a social security number straight away, and a tax number, and access to work, while the others get rejection decisions from the Asylum Service and the Refugee Authority, especially based on the safe third country and safe countries of origin.”

With migratory flows being significantly lower in recent years due to illegal pushbacks on the islands, asylum claims are generally being processed faster than in the past. According to the Ministry of Immigration, the average processing time for applications submitted in 2022 is 40 days.

In June 2021, the Greek government included Turkey in the national list of safe third countries for asylum seekers whose countries of origin include Syria and Afghanistan. The move has been criticised by dozens of NGOs working on the refugee issue. A recent report by Human Rights Watch calls for the repeal of the measure, citing the fact that Turkish authorities arbitrarily arrested, detained and deported back to Syria hundreds of Syrian refugees, both men and boys, between February and July 2022.

Meanwhile, Greece continues to be the first stop for thousands of Afghans. After Ukrainians, they are the second largest group of asylum seekers in the EU and by far the largest in Greece, where more than 37,000 – over a third of the registered – had submitted asylum applications by the beginning of October. “While the Greek government has welcomed refugees from Ukraine, efficiently registering them, issuing legal documents and allowing immediate access to work, Afghans in Greece, along with other asylum seekers and refugees, continue to be isolated from the Greek society in which they seek to rebuild their lives,” Dimitra Kalogeropoulou, director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Greece, recently told The Guardian.

There are several problems with the list of so-called safe countries of origin. According to Article 87 of Greek Law 4636/2019, a country can be considered safe if the asylum applicant “does not invoke serious reasons to consider that the [applicant’s] country is not a safe country of origin for him/her”. The law began to be implemented in 2021. The list has since grown to include 17 countries, including Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Even Ukraine was originally included, but on 1 December 2022 the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum at last removed it from the list.

But how do you decide whether a country of origin is safe? “The director of the asylum service has a team of officials who basically say ‘I want you to find out everything about, for example, Senegal and write a report. Then the Minister of Immigration and Asylum and the Minister of Interior issue an opinion based on this research report,” the lawyer X. Katsigiannis explains to MIIR. If someone comes from such a country, in the interview they will have to rebut the presumption of safety, which is usually impossible. 99% of these decisions are negative. “A few days ago I tried a case, a trans woman from Morocco. They dismissed it. They didn’t even go into the process of addressing the case individually and thoroughly, they relied on the country’s status. And the rejection decisions are usually 3 lines,” says Katsigiani. Applicants do not know what the internal recommendation is and cannot defend themselves. None of this applies to Ukrainians, as they are granted temporary protection immediately.

“This is institutional racism. Refugees are divided into two categories according to their origin,” laments David Schmittke, spokesman for the Saxony Refugee Council in Dresden. Indeed, in the early months of the war in Ukraine, there were also reports of discrimination against foreign residents of Ukraine attempting to flee the country.

“There is a spirit of welcome and generosity towards Ukrainians, which I do not criticise at all. They deserve it. But I would love to see the same treatment applied to Syrian refugees,” Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Euronews.

In the view of Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Europeans should “learn lessons” from their experience of welcoming the displaced Ukrainians, and extend this welcome to other refugees at a time when humanitarian crises are growing worldwide: “Do not forget the others”.

The use of pre-trial detention as a “pre-sentence” measure is also discussed by Nikolaos Koulouris, professor of prison policy at the University of Thrace. “An assessment is made by prosecutors and investigators, based – according to the law – on the existence of strong, ‘serious’ evidence that the act of which a person is accused has been committed and he is guilty of it. This is a pre-trial judgment of guilt, which can prejudice judges, who can see which accused person comes to trial free or on probation, and whether he or she has been transferred as a temporary prisoner. It is rare for such factors to go unnoticed, precisely because of the conditions laid down in the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure for provisional detention. These conditions, in addition to the presumption of guilt, also relate to the social and criminal situation of the accused, namely their lack of known residence, their criminal history, their risk of committing other offences and, more generally, anything deemed by judicial officers to indicate avoiding the imposition of the sentence and prior judicial involvement.”

Pre-trial detention is one of three restrictive measures available to judicial authorities in the treatment of defendants ahead of trial. The other two measures are the common restrictive conditions (attendance at the police station once a month, prohibition to leave the country, etc.) and house arrest with electronic monitoring devices (the so-called bracelet). So, when and under what conditions can judges decide on pre-trial detention?    

According to the Code of Criminal Procedure, provisional detention may be imposed in the case of a felony when there are serious indications of guilt, in order to prevent the commission of new crimes or to prevent the accused from absconding. Provisional detention is imposed if it is reasonably considered that restrictive measures or house arrest with electronic monitoring are not sufficient, and the accused has no known place of residence or has made preparations to escape.

The upper limit of pre-trial detention time for a single case is one year. “In wholly exceptional circumstances” described in the CCP, and when the charge is one that carries a life sentence or a maximum sentence of 15 years, the detention period may be extended by a further six months. However, even this constitutionally guaranteed maximum custodial sentence can be “broken” and extended by another year if a new prosecution for another offence is opened within the three months preceding the expiry of the 18-month period.

Legal requirements or the gravity of the alleged crime are not the only factors guiding judicial discretion. The remand decision, underlines Kosmatos, “can even be connected to the visibility of a case – the visibility of the case in the media and its impact on public opinion. I think public pressure can always influence to some extent the relevant judgement”.  

On the other hand, as Koulouris stresses, judicial bodies “with preconceived notions of what a dangerous criminal is, have an unfavourable, discriminatory approach towards people belonging to certain social groups. In other words, there are certain exogenous factors that influence their judgement. If, for example, the accused person is a foreigner or immigrant, or a user of addictive substances involved in their traffic, the decision in favour of temporary detention is more easily formed compared to a case involving a well-off citizen accused of a financial crime. Authorities will argue that the first category presents a greater and very real risk of absconding. However, a forensic reading suggests that certain social characteristics create, let’s say, an unconscious bias, which is also reflected in judgments deciding whether or not to impose provisional detention.”

The data in the Council of Europe’s report fully supports Koulouris here: out of a total of 2662 remand prisoners in 2021, foreign prisoners amounted to 1718, while Greek nationals amounted to 944. Thus, foreign detainees amounted to  64.5 percent of all remand prisoners in Greece.

“These numbers reflect the criminalisation of poverty and immigration”, comments Kostas Papadakis, a long-serving lawyer and former member of the Board of Directors of the Athens Bar Association. Papadakis adds that “xenophobic prejudices contribute to the discriminatory treatment of the foreign population and lead to their disproportianate detention. These people are often treated as third-class citizens, forced to apologise during interrogation and trial without understanding much – if anything – of the case files, with a translator who often translates into an intermediate language, such as English, instead of their native language.”

Over a year in prison until trial 

There is another important element here that not only differentiates our country from other European countries, but also further reveals how entrenched pre-trial detention is in the Greek criminal justice system as a form of advance punishment. According to analysis of the Council of Europe data,  the average duration of pre-trial detention in Greece is 13.2 months, while the corresponding European median is just 4.5 months. In fact, among the EU countries where data is available, Greece tops the list, followed by Portugal with an average duration of 11.3 months, and Italy with 7.6 months.  

The European (albeit non-EU) country that surpasses Greece is Serbia, with a median duration of 17.9 months.  

“The maximum time allowed for pre-trial detention under the Constitution and procedural law, i.e. eighteen months, combined with the slow administration of criminal justice, is a framework that facilitates prolonged time in prison pending trial, sub-judice,” Koulouris says of the report’s findings.

Kosmatos is in agreement, emphasising that “it certainly has to do with the sluggish administration of criminal justice, and in multi-person trials this is even more difficult”. However, the problem extends to the whole interrogation apparatus as well as the required infrastructure, both in terms of material and personnel. For example, Kosmatos notes, “in order to translate the case file, it has to be sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which can take from 2 to 6 months. In cases involving finance, banking, etc, an expert will be appointed by the panel and will submit his report after months of investigation. The investigative process involves more than gathering witness and defendant testimonies. There is a whole series of investigative operations, involving laboratories, forensic experts, expert witnesses – services that are not under the jurisdiction of the courts.”

At the same time, abuse of pre-trial detention has an evident collateral impact on the known problem of chronic overcrowding in Greek prisons. Covid 19 did nothing to alleviate the problem, since the Greek state, unlike most European countries, took no measures to reduce congestion, as the MIIR/IMEdD survey on the spread of covid in Greek prisons has shown. Indeed, the prison population only increased during this period, increasing in 2021 by 3.6 percent compared to 2020. Meanwhile, the occupancy rate based on a comparative analysis of the actual prison population and places in each institution exceeded 111 percent (111.4 prisoners per 100 places), the second worst performance in the EU after Romania.

Jailed for 7 months for rioting, while playing basketball

The criteria that prosecutors and investigators typically use to proceed with provisional detention occasionally provoke public outcry, especially when it comes to selectiveness. Clearly, the injustice of defendants subsequently found innocent, yet have been subjected to extended deprivation of liberty and various other consequences, tends to arouse public sympathy.

An emblematic recent example is the unjust 7-month detention of 30-year-old Alexandros M. (also referred to in the media as “Indian”) following a mass demonstration in March 2021 in Nea Smyrni against police violence. The march included widespread clashes between protesters and police forces, during which an on-site police officer was assaulted, which was caught on camera. The same evening, Prime Minister Mitsotakis made a statement about the officer’s injury (but not about the recorded violence by police officers). Three days later, Alexander M. was arrested outside his workplace.

“Alexandros was the definition of a scapegoat, produced in order to show the public that the guilty party was found”, his lawyer Pavlos Sarakis tells us. On the day, and at the time he allegedly assaulted the supervising police officer, Alexandros was playing basketball in the neighbourhood of Elefsina, an area 35 minutes by car (without traffic) from the site of the clashes. This fact was proven by video footage, and known from the first moment to the investigating authorities.

Nevertheless, Alexandros was deprived of his liberty for seven full months before he was released from prison. It would be 14 months before he was completely exonerated by the Athens Judicial Council.

“Alexandros, a man of extremely low means, suffered severely, both physically and psychologically,” Sarakis tells us, leaving aside accusations of political expediency against the government and the Ministries of Justice and Citizen Protection, as well as the judicial authorities, since the latter decided on remand “because the alleged victim was a police officer.”

 One in five prisoners in preventive detention in Europe

According to a recent survey by the European Data Journalism Network, of which MIIR is a member, one in five prisoners in European prisons is in pre-trial detention. A total of 100,000 pre-trial detainees were in European prison cells in 2021, with the European median pre-trial detention rate at 21.6 percent.

The SPACE I report’s general category of “prisoners not serving a final sentence” was used for this analysis, since the legal status is the same in the majority of countries, while several countries do not distribute their data across all categories. For example, Greece and Austria identify prisoners on remand with this category, while France includes prisoners on remand but also includes the small minority of detainees awaiting appeal (7 percent). A detailed breakdown of the number and percentages of prisoners in preventive detention by EU Member State is shown in the map below.

The maximum legal limits permitted for pre-trial detention vary among European countries, so that no uniform conclusions can be drawn. A common rule, established by the European Convention on Human Rights, is that a person in preventive detention has the right “to be tried within a reasonable time or to be released”. The problem is that “reasonable time” is relative. With different systems of criminal assessment, extensions of the permissible limits, as well as variations depending on the when the crime was committed, the maximum time a defendant can spend in pre-trial detention (and sometimes only for certain crimes) is six months in Germany and Croatia, one year in Italy, 18 months in Greece and Bulgaria, and between one and four years in Hungary, Spain and France, depending on the seriousness of the charge.

European Court of Justice review of the detention and shaming of 27 HIV-positive women

Turn the clock back to May 2012, the year when the Greek police, on the orders of the Ministries of Citizen Protection and Health, launched raids against HIV-positive women in the centre of Athens, on the grounds of public safety and health. Hundreds of women were brought in and subjected to forced medical testing for HIV, and 27 of these women were taken into custody on charges of intentional grievous bodily harm for knowingly spreading the virus – despite not knowing they were HIV-positive – while being shamed by the publication of their details and photographs. More arrests followed, but did not lead to the release of personal details, due to the international outcry and reaction of numerous Greek organisations and institutions. In the following years the women were acquitted. Meanwhile, several of the accused spent up to 11 months in custody while their personal details and photographs, though removed from the official police website, are still circulating on the internet to this day. One woman committed suicide after her acquittal, while 6 others died for reasons related to hardship, precarious health and lack of a supportive environment.

“One may argue that these deaths are not necessarily tied to the raids and detention. However, these vulnerable women received no support from the state and certainly no redress or reparations for what they suffered due to the actions of state officials and functionaries that scarred them forever,” says lawyer Eleni Spathana, who, together with other lawyers from the Lawyers’ Group for Refugee and Migrant Rights, defended several of these women. “Instead, these women were imprisoned, vilified, stigmatised for life and after death, and used in a clear operation of political expediency just before the 2012 elections. At that time, under the doctrine of public order and security, and the ‘protection of public health’ that went along with it, the leaderships of the Ministries of Health and Citizen Protection engaged in a witch-hunt, with Health Minister Loverdos issuing statements about ‘health bombs in parts of Athens’, ‘immigrants spreading infectious diseases’, etc. and the issuing of the despicable Health Ordinance, which forced, among other things, medical examination and hospitalization in designated areas, interfering with the privacy of the person, and illegally interfering with living quarters”.

Spathana also indicates “the enormous responsibility of the investigating and prosecuting authorities, who co-signed the flimsy indictment that put them in prison”.

With the assistance of lawyers from the Lawyers’ Group, applications have been filed by 13 HIV-positive women to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for violations of Article 3, for subjection to inhumane and degrading treatment, unlawful deprivation of liberty and conditions of detention, forced HIV testing, as well as Article 8, relating to shaming and invasion of the sphere of personal and family life. Spathana adds that the lawyers have asked the Court “to take action and to include in the sentencing judgments the deceased women, as the Court has done in similar, exceptional cases of human rights violations that have significant, broader consequences for population groups and have been of concern to society and public opinion.”

The ECHR’s decision on the appeals has yet to arrive.

In addition to recourse to the European courts, legislation in Greece provides for a right to compensation for those who have been unjustly imprisoned. According to the CPC, this amount can range from €20 to €50 for each day of imprisonment, depending on the financial situation of the victim.   

“The amounts provided for in the Code are meagre,” Papadakis comments. “It only adds to the victim’s sense of shame to ask for tax returns and to make the amount of compensation depend on their financial situation, i.e. whether, if he were free, he would have worked or not. As if a stay in prison alone is not a loss to be compensated,” he adds scornfully.

“And apparently no man would consider it a commensurate quid pro quo against the unjust deprivation of his liberty.”

This article is part of the European Data Journalism Network, a group of independent media organisations producing data-driven coverage of European topics. It is published under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

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