INTRODUCTION Introduction The management of third country nationals’ mixed population flows, refugees and migrants, can be discerned in various discrete stages: • from the first reception and their registration, • to their dispersal throughout the country, • the processing of their petitions, • their incorporation into social and economic life for all third country nationals who remain, • their relocation to other member states of the European Union for all those who substantiated a claim for family reunification or who benefited from the programme of relocation for asylum seekers in the period 2015-2017, • or the return and/or readmission to their native countries or to Turkey, for those whose stay was not regarded as legal. The Greek Ombudsman is present in all these stages, exercising control over the legality of the proceedings, observing at close hand the planning and implementation of the operational activity of the public services, formulating recommendations and suggestions for institutional interventions, emphasizing imperfections, gaps, malfunctions, and shortages, both political and of a managerial nature. In the Special Report published at the beginning of the summer of 2017, the Greek Ombudsman highlighted that the question of the management of migrant and refugee flows is first and foremost a political one, for Europe as much as for Greece. With the obvious absence of common, uniform and coherent policies, the European Union continued to lean on -and to support- ad hoc agreements of dubious legal but significant political value and weight, such as the Joint Statement with Turkey in 2016. At the level of the European Union, essential conditions for saving up the necessary time were projected: • the control of population flows • their geographical limitation at the boundaries of the border areas of Europe • the dilution in the case of exceptional population density • the minimal improvement of living conditions and the abuse of the institutional context which foresees and allows administrative detention, 7