Migration and Asylum Minister Thanos Plevris referred to the decongestion of Crete and the return of migrants in an interview with the public broadcaster ERT on Tuesday.
"The decongestion will be completed this week, we’ve had no new arrivals for six days, and this is due to the weather conditions in the Libyan Sea. We estimate that fewer than 500 people will remain on the island by tomorrow - yesterday there were 980, and another 200 were already being transferred, so in reality, the decongestion of the island has already taken place," the minister emphasised.
He also referred to a proposal by local authorities to create two small registration facilities on the island of Crete, but clarified that the preferred plan is the creation of a single closed facility. As he explained, this facility will not hold a permanent population: "Depending on the flow, irregular migrants who arrive will enter the structure, be registered, and then transferred to the mainland. But there will always be a population present, under closed-structure conditions - and that is the chosen approach for Crete. In other words, not a structure from which people can freely come and go."
When asked where the facility will be located, he replied that the Hellenic National Defence General Staff (HNDGS) has been asked to identify closed military camps, and a final decision will be made in the coming days.