The hand-over at the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum was completed, during which the caretaker minister, Daniel Esdras, handed over the baton to the new minister, Dimitris Kairides, and the deputy minister, Sofia Voultepsi, who continues her tenure at the ministry after the tenure of the caretaker government.

“My goal as a service minister was, with the help of everyone, to keep the ministry in the position it should be, for our country to continue to function as if there was no gap. And that’s what we did. So, handing over the baton to the new minister today after a month when he really had everything, I think that even though it is a month, it seemed to me as if a year had passed”, said Mr. Esdras. He also referred to the difficult times such as the shipwreck in Pylos and the islets of Evros. “Our interim government has achieved a lot. Because not only our ministry but many ministries faced the unexpected and everything went very well,” said Mr. Esdras handing over the portfolio of the ministry to the new minister and added that he is very proud of this caretaker government and of Mr. Sharma , the caretaker prime minister who completed their term with a positive sign.

“For us the most important thing is the Luxembourg agreement. We managed to close a deal that had been dragging on since 2016. It was so important and so great that we really put our best foot forward with the full help of the Permanent Mission we have there, without whose help we would not have done the deal and with the help of the general secretary, we did the impossible, we did our best, that is, we brought back 80 to 85% of what we went to bring, and broadly speaking, what we managed to do was to change things that could not be changed for years”, emphasized Mr. Esdras and referred to Monimo Solidarity Mechanism, the new criterion, which is added to the Regulation, which provides that the responsibility for examining an asylum application will end in 18 months, from the 10 years it was until today, when this application is rejected in border asylum procedures and finally the establishment of an annual meeting of ministers.

The acting minister also mentioned that there has been a great improvement in relation to the conditions prevailing in the structures of identification, reception and accommodation of refugees.

The new Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Dimitris Kairidis, assuming his duties, spoke of the heavy responsibility of assuming this critical position. “There is no doubt that immigration throughout time, even more so today, is an issue that concerns Greek and European societies as a whole and has been in the news again in recent weeks”, the new minister pointed out and thanked the outgoing minister on behalf of the prime minister for his great contribution in a period of very dense events but also the executives and the leadership of the ministry because they proved that there is continuity in the state. Finally, he thanked the Prime Minister for the honor and trust of this critical post and said that he perceives this position as something very important. “I am a liberal person, we are humanitarians but we are not naive and I think that we must always keep this balance in mind in a policy that has been effective until today, these past four years” Mr. Kairidis emphasized and expressed the belief that the the country must persist in this policy which, as he said, is tough but fair and that the integration policies must be strengthened, the issues of legal immigration, the international image of the country and European solutions must be examined starting from the last success of the Luxembourg Agreement , which he characterized as a first step and not the final destination. In conclusion, Mr. Kairides said that the work starts immediately and that there is no grace period.

The Deputy Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Sofia Vultepsi, also thanked the outgoing minister for taking over at a very difficult time, who also proved what she said is what we should always keep in mind when there is a caretaker government, continuity and security. “Thank you very much Daniel, you faced the crises but we also faced our own crisis because we had an election campaign and we were watching what was happening here,” said Mrs. Vultepsi, who thanked the prime minister for entrusting her again with this very important and sensitive post as he said.

The Deputy Minister of Immigration and Asylum specifically referred to integration and unaccompanied minors for which there was cooperation as it is a horizontal policy issue, as she said. “The issue of integration must go forward. This can’t go on. We will work closely with both the minister and the secretaries and this will be over. Those who are involved in this issue must understand now that we are starting that we are at the beginning, we have a new law, which we have to implement and which is related because I want to remind you that for the first time the country in the matter of minors links education with staying in the country, as is done in all the countries of the world. “Well, for the first time we have a law that says that whoever enters the country as an unaccompanied minor, receives a ten-year residence permit in the country if he has completed three years of secondary education, which means that the path to integration is now open,” concluded Mrs. Voultepsi.