Germany, France pledge hundreds of staff to support Greece

Eager to implement swiftly the EU’s migration deal on Friday with Turkey, Germany and France have pledged to send 600 police officers and asylum experts to Greece, according to a letter sent to the European Commission within hours of the conclusion of the summit in Brussels devoted to migration.

The agreement, which came into force Sunday, specifies that all migrants who land on the Greek Aegean islands face deportation to Turkey. For every Syrian refugee sent back, the EU will agree to take one currently in Turkey who comes from Syria. The resettlement scheme would start early next month.

As part of the deal, Greece was promised help from other EU countries. Later on Friday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and his French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, wrote a joint letter to “stress the particularly urgency of such support” to Greece.

POLITICO obtained a copy of the letter, which was addressed to Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans and Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who oversees the migration portfolio.

Both governments were waiting only for “the Greek authorities to specify their needs” to relevant EU agencies and were willing to deploy police officers and asylum experts “as soon as (Greece) will be ready to receive those additional experts,” the interior ministers wrote.

Each pledged 200 police and 100 asylum case handlers, which would account for a significant share of the additional staff that the Commission estimates is needed to implement Friday’s deal. The Commission said 400 extra “asylum experts” had to be deployed from other EU countries via the EU’s asylum agency EASO, along with 1,500 policemen.

France and Germany are “ready to offer technical assistance to Greece to strengthen the return procedures,” the ministers wrote.  “This seems adequate given the current situation in Greece, and it is in our view a way to express European solidarity,” they wrote.