50 Xenakis S., Cheliotis L. country, and without taking adequate steps to remedy them. Notwithstanding the obligation placed on EU member-states since 2011 not to return asylum seekers to Greece due to abysmal conditions of migrant detention there [67], in the face of multiplying reports by European and international monitoring bodies, as well as by NGOs, testifying to these conditions, and the repeated validation of such accounts by ECtHR rulings (see, e.g., Mahammad and Others v. Greece, 2015), Greece’s obligation to process new arrivals under the Dublin regime has persisted. In winter 2016, moreover, the European Commission announced that asylum seeker returns to Greece would be re-instigated as of March the following year, at the same time that the EU was coming under critical media scrutiny for its alleged gross mismanagement of funds intended to improve conditions in migrant detention sites in the country [59]. The EU has also contributed to poor conditions of detention in Greece by repeatedly threatening to expel the country from the Schengen area unless it immediately instigate more rigorous border control measures. In response to such threats, for example, Greece accelerated construction of prison-like asylum centres in 2012 [68] and established ‘hot-spot’ detention camps in 2016. Both initiatives were essentially predicated on practices of mass mandatory detention, in contravention of both regional and international human rights law (see, e.g., [69–71]). More generally, the EU has put pressure on Greece to manage irregular migration in ways that have lowered the standards for the treatment of migrants on Greek soil, effectively undercutting pressure from the CPT, the ECtHR and other official and non-official bodies internationally and domestically for the improved treatment of detained migrants within the country. For instance, in direct response to the EUTurkey Statement of March 2016, which agreed the large-scale return to Turkey of irregular migrants deemed ineligible for asylum in the EU [72], and under pressure of threatened expulsion from Schengen, Greece introduced legislation in April 2016 to enable ‘fast-track’ deportations of irregular migrants to Turkey. This process has reportedly led to forced expulsions and bulk treatment of asylum claims without proper consideration of individual cases, thereby violating ECHR obligations (see, e.g., [73]). Even so, Greece has since been publicly chided for causing delays to the planned return of migrants to Turkey by continuing to consider asylum applications on an individual basis, despite this being a requirement under international human rights law [74, 75]. European counterparts are also reported to have informally exerted pressure on Greece to engage in illegal refoulements (or ‘push-backs’) of migrants’ vessels at sea, a practice notorious for its wilful use of violence and reckless endangering of the lives of migrants [76]. As relayed by the Greek Minister of Migration himself in December 2015: BThey don’t dare to ask us to ‘drown them’, but if you do pushback on a plastic boat in the middle of the sea with 50 or 70 refugees aboard, you’re asking me to drown them^ [77]. In sum, through the detail of their blunt and insistent official and off-the-record demands for greater border security and tighter migration controls, European political elites have exerted more effective pressure on Greece to contravene the ECHR than other CoE bodies such as the CPT and ECtHR have done in attempting to rectify Greek non-compliance. Beyond European counter-compliance pressure on Greece, regional and international trends in compliance with human rights rules and norms have also played a tacit role in Greece’s evaluation of the imperative of compliance. Whilst there is a long history of