The Mail –The European Union has started legal action against Greece, Italy and Croatia for failing to correctly register migrants.
Tens of thousands of migrants have arrived in the three countries over the past few months but less than half of them have been registered by national authorities.
Greece has only fingerprinted around 121,000 of the almost 500,000 people who arrived there between July 20 and November 30 this year, according to the European Commission.
It comes as Turkey’s coastguard last night picked up more than 150 migrants seeking to cross to Greece in three flimsy dinghies during a night time swoop on their routes across the Aegean Sea.
The Commission warned the three countries about the shortfalls two months ago, but said today that these ‘concerns have not been effectively addressed’.
The EU’s executive arm said it sent formal letters of notice to the three, the first formal step in infringement proceedings.
Fears over the possibility of terrorists entering Europe hidden among migrants have surged after it emerged that two of the Paris attackers passed through Greece posing as refugees.
Italy and the other states are accused of breaching criteria laid down in the Dublin Convention, which states that the EU state where an asylum seeker first enters is responsible for taking digital fingerprints and registering asylum applications.
The Convention also states that asylum seekers should remain in the first EU country where they arrive.
However, many refugees entering the countries refuse to have their fingerprints taken because they plan to move on to northern Europe, where there are more favourable benefits and job opportunities.
Meanwhile, Turkish coastguards, patrolling off the resort of Cesme in western Turkey, last night picked up 152 migrants seeking to travel the short distance to the Greek island of Chios.
The vessel Umut used radar to spot the migrants after they set off from beaches on the Cesme coast bound for Greece.
When a migrant dinghy was identified, speedboats were sent from the Umut to apprehend the dinghy and tow it back towards the mother ship.
They were then taken back to the Turkish shore aboard smaller boats and handed over to the Turkish authorities.
Some of the migrants appeared to initially want to resist the authorities but then complied when the scale of the coastguard deployment – including the Umut – became apparent, an AFP photographer said.
After a key agreement with the European Union last month, Ankara appears to have stepped up efforts to stop migrants from leaving its soil in search of better opportunities in EU member states.
In a major operation last week, some 4,000 migrants were picked up in the Aegean Sea.
The European Union wants Turkey to step up its patrolling and stopping of migrants in exchange for a kick-starting of its long-stalled EU membership bid.
