In a press conference, the Athens Bar Association complained that lawyers who work for the Greek Asylum Service have not been paid for over a year.
“For the umpteenth time, our colleagues who provide their services to the Asylum Registry of the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum have not been paid from November 2023 onwards. It should be noted that the funds are overwhelmingly coming from the European Union,” they stated. “Despite this, the Ministry chooses to prioritize payments to contractors and suppliers rather than to lawyers who provide, as the Greek state is obliged to do under international conventions ratified by the country, free legal assistance in the second instance to asylum seekers.”
They report that a delegation of the Athens Bar Association held a meeting with the Secretary General of the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum, Mr. Logothetis, who pledged that the amounts owed to the lawyers would be paid immediately, though the exact date of payment was not specified.
Other organizations that work with the Greek Asylum Service have similarly faced a lack of payment.
The NGO METAdrasi, which supplied and coordinated almost all of the interpretation within the asylum system, announced a stoppage in interpretation services in May, as their contracts with the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum expired and were not renewed by the ministry.
At the time METAdrasi stated that they have not received their contractually agreed payments for nine months. Their interpreters had worked that nine months with partial or no payment. Money for interpretation in the asylum system are also earmarked funds, already paid by the European Commission to the Greek Ministry of Finance, and simply were not transferred to the NGO.
“It is inconceivable that a humanitarian, non-profit-making organization should continue for months to meet its obligations to its employees, thus ‘lending’ to the State, whose competent authorities are not releasing, as they should, the European funds already allocated for this purpose” said the organization in the announcement.
The asylum service is still operating with piecemeal interpretation and a lack of interpreters.
An open letter signed by 36 NGOs involved with asylum support on Friday critiquing the ongoing disruption of interpretation services, stating: “no concrete measures towards reinstating a functional interpretation system in Greek asylum procedures seem to have been put in place.”
The letter states that there have been “multiple instances where as a result of the situation, asylum seekers can hardly progress with their asylum claims or communicate effectively with the authorities, leading to serious consequences on all aspects of their lives.”
The Ministry has not commented on when or how they will reinstate interpretation services.
