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Video
18 October 2019

Video blog by Michael O'Flaherty: situation in Greek hotspots

Children, youth and older people
Asylum, migration and borders
In this edition Michael O'Flaherty reports back from his visit to the asylum seeker facility in Lesbos and calls for the support of all EU Member States to improve in particular the situation of unaccompanied children.

Yesterday I returned from Moria. That’s the asylum seeker reception facility on the island of Lesbos in Greece.

What I saw disturbed me greatly. Moria has the capacity of 3.500 people. Right now it is housing 13.500 people, with more arriving every day.

The situation is unsustainable. The staff who are doing heroic work are unable to care of the needs of these people arriving on our European shores.

Europe has to do more. Other EU Member States have to show real solidarity with Greece in this moment of need. Here is something concrete that can be done.

There are something like 4,000 unaccompanied children in Greece right now. Other EU Member States could take a size of a proportion of those, spread out across EU Member States, lodged in safe facilities where those children can thrive and can grow into a proper respectful adulthood.

This is the real test of our European values.