ATHENS – “Greece is no longer a gateway,” Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarachi said, replying to independent MP Kostantinos Bogdanos’ question in parliament on Wednesday.

Mitarachi said that “in 2022 we will have roughly 4 percent of the arrivals in EU, from over 60 percent that we had in 2015. We are not a gateway any more”.

He also said that in the summer of 2019 there were 202,000 pending asylum request and today there are only 35,000 and there will be none until the end of the year.

Referring to the view that we have millions of foreigners in Greece, he said that this is not true. “Those that have applied for asylum are 0.3 percent of the population while the recognised refugees living in Greece are only 0.5 percent of the population,” Mitarchi explained.