resources to maintain an adequate standard of living that is sufficient to safeguard their health and sustenance.920 The latter is examined in proportion to the financial criteria determining eligibility for the Social Solidarity Benefit (Κοινωνικό Επίδομα Αλληλεγγύης, KEA),921 which was renamed to Minimum Guaranteed Income (Ελάχιστο Εγγυημένο Εισόδημα) in 2020.922 The law also provides that reception conditions can be reduced or withdrawn following an individual and justified decision by the competent reception authority, based on the full set of grounds provided under Article 20 of the (recast) Reception Directive, including if it is established that the applicant concealed their financial resources or if they have lodged a subsequent asylum application. 923 That being said, delays in accessing reception continued to be reported in 2024, on account of chronic delays in accessing asylum on the mainland, which have persisted even after the substitution of the skype registration system with the MoMA’s new electronic platform in the summer of 2022 (also see Access to the procedure on the mainland).924 During the months preceding the new platform’s operationalisation, and by contrast to temporary protection applications (who, with scarce exceptions, were all registered in a timely manner), access to asylum from the mainland for people who had not undergone first reception procedures became a near impossibility, leaving many applicants in a state of legal limbo. Yet, as noted elsewhere,925 even after its operationalisation, the online platform has been frequently unavailable/not functioning and, when functional, it has been observed that appointments for the full registration of an application are often granted many months later. 926 These delays, which have persisted in Malakasa RIC throughout 2024 as well, have resulted in applicants’ frequent inability to access asylum procedures for prolonged periods of time, during which they do not enjoy any of the rights granted to them by their status as applicants, including access to reception. Most importantly, although the new platform serves the purpose of scheduling the registration of a person’s will to apply for international protection and should thus be sufficient to establish a person’s status as an asylum applicant, the ongoing practice by the MoMA not only fails to recognise recourse to the platform as tantamount to a person expressing their will to apply for asylum, but on the contrary, the attestation granted through the platform clearly states that it does not amount to proof of such will. As increasingly observed by GCR’s Legal Unit, during 2023 and 2024, this has frequently resulted in the arbitrary use of detention for the purpose of returning people who had already registered their will to apply for asylum via the platform. In at least eight cases represented by GCR in 2023, most of which concerned applicants from Afghanistan, competent First Instance Administrative Courts have also ruled that upon requesting the scheduling of the registration of an application for international protection via the platform, the persons concerned receive the status of an asylum applicant, as per the law. Yet, instead of reviewing the practice, the Greek authorities filled a request for the first of these Decisions to be revoked before the Administrative Court of Kavala. The application for revocation was rejected as inadmissible by the Court.927 A petition for violation of EU law on the same issue has been filed by the GCR in December 2022 (CHAP(2022)03534), and is pending before the European Commission.928 920 921 922 923 924 925 926 927 928 Article 59(3) Asylum Code. Article 235 L 4389/2016. Article 29 L. 4659/2020. Article 61 Asylum Code. MoMA, Launch of the online application platform for asylum seeker registration appointments, 13 July 2022, available in Greek at: https://bit.ly/43PpBki. For more on the skype system, see MIT, Lives on Hold: Access to Asylum on Mainland Greece, Crete and Rhodes, November 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/3JOqBe2. MIT, Blocked from the system: Voices of people excluded from the asylum procedure on mainland Greece, Crete and Rhodes, May 2022, https://bit.ly/45wetd3. MIT, Statement on new registration asylum procedure, 1st September 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3Ms6Onu. GCR, Submission of The Greek Council for Refugees to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe concerning the groups of cases of M.S.S. v. Greece (Application No. 30696/09) and Rahimi v. Greece (8687/08), July 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yhjfta5s. Also see RSA, Registration of asylum applications in the new mainland RIC in Greece, February 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/3s32d73j, pp. 5-6. An excerpt of the relevant decision (ΔΠρΚαβ ΑΡ516/2023) can be found in GCR, HIAS & RSA, Greek Asylum Case Law Report: Issue 1/2023, 5 July 2023, available (Greek) at: https://tinyurl.com/pejs4m9m, p. 57. For more see GCR, inter alia, “Απόφαση του Διοικητικού Πρωτοδικείου κρίνει παράνομη την επιστροφή και κράτηση προσώπου που έχει αιτηθεί μέσω της online πλατφόρμας του Υπουργείου τον προγραμματισμό της πλήρους καταγραφής του αιτήματος ασύλου”, February 2023, available in Greek at: https://tinyurl.com/722wkst2; “Administrative courts: The detention of asylum seekers pending full registration, to whom the Ministry of Immigration & Asylum does not recognize the status of applicant, is illegal”, available at: https://tinyurl.com/722wkst2; Administrative courts: The detention of asylum seekers pending full registration, to whom the Ministry of Migration & Asylum does not recognize the status of applicant, is illegal, 21 March 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/5n7arpsa. 178