clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Germany to accept 50 refugee children from Greek islands 

April 9, 2020 at 3:49 pm

A view of makeshift tents of asylum seekers, hoping that Greece will open the border gate, on 19 March 2020 [Cihan Demirci/Anadolu Agency]

The German Ministry of the Interior announced on Tuesday that the federal cabinet was set to approve the transfer of 50 unaccompanied minors from Greece.

The children and teenagers will be brought to Germany “in the following week if possible”, the ministry said. After their arrival, they will be quarantined for two weeks and then sent to different states across the country.

In an interview with German TV station RTL yesterday, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that Germany would take in a total of 350-500 minors over the next few weeks. He also said that Germany and Luxembourg were currently the only countries within the European Union (EU) willing to take in refugees and migrants from Greece.

Several opposition politicians and activists in Germany criticised the government’s handling of the situation in Greece, saying that taking in just 50 minors was far too little.

READ: Solidarity in the age of coronavirus: What the Arabs must do