The physical removal of an irregular migrant, thus, may be carried out in four manners; (a)
readmission, (b) forced return, (c) voluntary return, (d) assisted voluntary return.
Readmission Agreements
Readmission agreements are considered by the Greek authorities to be the most practical tool
in the context of irregular migration management.114 Readmission, compared to
returns/expulsions, is a bureaucratically simplified procedure carried out on the basis of interState requests (provided the third country cooperates).115 The process primarily concerns
migrants who have not yet been issued a expulsion order, and provided no criminal charges have
been pressed against them by the Prosecutor. Contrary to other removal procedures, migrants
are not served with an administrative or judicial expulsion decision or a return decision (see Art.
77 Law N. 3386/2005, Arts. 21 and 30 Law N. 3907/2011). 116 In the context of its irregular
migration policy, Greece has signed readmission agreements amongst others with Turkey (2002),
Albania (2004) and Pakistan (2010).
The most successful re-admission agreement in practice is the one with Albania. The least
successful has been the one with Turkey. By way of illustration, in the course of 2010, Greece
requested the readmission of a total of 10,198 irregular migrants, of whom the Turkish
authorities accepted 1,457. Eventually only 501 persons were returned. During the same year,
48,177 Albanian migrants were returned through the readmission procedure. Greece has
unsuccessfully pursued the completion of bilateral readmission agreements also with Iraq,
Afghanistan and Bangladesh.117
hs/NOMOI/ ). The New Migration Code of 2014 has left the legislative framework regulating returns intact (see Article
139). The return of an Irregular Migrant is regulated by Law 3907/2011.
114
See Deputy Minister of Exterior, Parliamentary Reply of 28 June 2013, available at
http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/67715b2c-ec81-4f0c-ad6a-476a34d732bd/8134194.pdf
115
See Council of the European Union, Council Recommendation of 24 July 1995 on the guiding principles to be
followed in drawing up protocols on the implementation of readmission agreements a, Official Journal C274, 19
September 1996, vailable at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31996Y0919(08)&from=EL
116
See Police Reply to Eliamep, 24 June 2014
117
See Deputy Minister of Exterior, Parliamentary Reply of 28 June 2013, available at
http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/67715b2c-ec81-4f0c-ad6a-476a34d732bd/8134194.pdf
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