A citizen initiative in Osnabrück, a city in the federal state of Lower-Saxony in north-west Germany, is trying to raise awareness of the plight of the 50,000 refugees stranded in Greece.
The initiative, named ’50 from Idomeni’, presented a petition on Monday, signed by more than 50,000 people, to the Federal Ministry of the Interior to honour the country’s pledge to admit 27,300 refugees from Greece and Italy by September 2017.
So far, the relocation process is advancing at a very slow pace, with only 2,200 refugees having been relocated to Germany. This came as a cause for concern for the people behind the initiative, who wrote an open letter to chancellor Angela Merkel, asking for the significant increase in the monthly refugee intake.
“The relocation program, which was adopted by the EU in 2015, is intended to relieve Italy and Greece − the two countries which have led hundreds of thousands of refugees to Europe in the last two years,” reads the petition.
“In particular, Greece, which suffers even under the economic crisis and the austerity policy imposed by the EU, is massively overburdened with a dignified accommodation and care for the refugees.”
Holding the chancellor accountable for ‘quietly boycotting’ the decision (which could be instrumental in her losing the upcoming elections), the statement dismisses this stance, saying that it is out of “neither a necessity nor a moral justification. In Germany, there are plenty of vacant refugee shelters where people can temporarily stay. There are a number of municipalities that have agreed to be accepted and there are still tens of thousands of volunteers who would welcome and support the fugitives”.