The Mail — A British Home Secretary Amber Rudd will deploy a team of 40 British officials to the popular holiday islands such as Kos and Lesbos.
Since March, all new arrivals on the islands are supposed to be stopped from crossing to the Greek mainland and sent back to Turkey.
But figures released yesterday reveal just 748 have been returned in the 10 months since the a 6 billion euro deal was struck with Turkey.
Furthermore European officials believe as many as 4,000 people registered in Greece’s migrant camps are unaccounted for and could have slipped north into the rest of Europe.
Miss Rudd will today attend a meeting of European interior ministers in Brussels as concerns grow the deal with Turkey is on the verge of collapse.
Last night in a statement to MPs she wrote: ‘The UK will announce an additional package of support to Greece including up to an extra 40 staff over the winter period to support this process and ease congestion on the increasingly over-crowded islands.
‘In particular, we are looking to provide flow management, case-workers and interpreters and returns expertise.’
EU leaders in March agreed to hand over six billion euros to Turkey and loosen travel restrictions for its 80 million citizens if the country took back all those landing on the Greek islands.
The number of crossings from Turkey has been dramatically cut to around 80 a day, but remains much higher than the number of people being sent back, a European Commission report found yesterday.
‘The pace of returns from Greece to Turkey is too slow’, the report warned as it revealed just four people were sent back in the first two weeks of November.
‘As a result, additional pressure is put on the already overstretched reception facilities on the Greek islands, and this has contributed to recent public order incidents,’ it said.
There are 16,295 migrants present on the islands despite only 8,204 places in official camps and temporary accommodation. Greek authorities report the presence of around 62,000 on both the mainland and islands.
Belgium last month evacuated its border officials from the Greek islands because of concerns over their safety following protests about the conditions in the camps..
Under the EU’s Dublin asylum rules, the country where a migrant first lands must process their asylum request.
If people move on to other countries, such as Britain, they can be sent back to the first country they entered.
