(Reuters) Greece will not allow a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis to unfold on its borders following the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday after visiting a new migrant camp on an island near Turkey.
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August brought fears in Europe of a replay of 2015, when nearly 1 million asylum-seekers, mostly Syrians, fled to Europe by crossing from Turkey to Greece.
In the latest example of its toughening migration policy, Greece opened an EU-funded camp on Samos earlier this month, a sprawling facility, heavily surveilled and surrounded by barbed wire.
“We will not accept uncontrolled migratory flows similar to the ones we saw in 2015,” Mitsotakis told reporters on the flight back to Athens, and Europe needed to work with Afghanistan’s neighbours to ensure refugees stayed in the region.
