Athens News Agency: News in English, 08-06-19

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Europarliament on immigration

[01] Europarliament on immigration

Varvitsiotis said that out of the 112,000 illegal immigrants that Greece received last year, most of them had other European countries as their destination "which means that the problem of immigration is a European one, meaning that it concerns all of us and all of us must confront it together."

The head of the main opposition PASOK party's Eurodeputies, Stavros Lambrinidis, said that there are certain principles in Europe that should be "non-negotiable."

Lambrinidis said that in Europe "in no way can a person be jailed for 18 months and indeed when he himself is not to blame, but because authorities of the country that he comes from refuse to cooperate in his deportation process. This should be a non-negotiable principle."

Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Eurodeputy Thanasis Pafilis said in his intervention that the directive reveals "in a cynical way, the real inhuman character of the European Union and of its policy."

Referring to the detention period, he stressed that "it is being enacted that impoverished immigrants should be detained for 18 months, even underaged children in concentration camps with living conditions that are a disgrace for human civilisation," while adding that with the new measures what will be increasing will be "the turnover of immigrant smugglers and of gangs because the tougher the measures get the more the prices increase."

Caption: ANA-MPA file photo of the head of the ruling New Democracy party's Eurodeputies, Ioannis Varvitsiotis,

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