The situation for recognised refugees who have international protection status is getting worse in Greece, making it near impossible for them to live in dignity. Europe is becoming increasingly hostile toward them.
Since the end of 2024, HELIOS (Hellenic Integration Support for Beneficiaries of International Protection), the only official accommodation programme in Greece, has been only partially functional. At the beginning of 2025, the programme was completely halted due to ministerial decisions. This meant that services for refugees, such as housing subsidies, language courses and integration into the labour market, were completely discontinued. Refugees who are granted international protection are also directly threatened by homelessness and precarious living conditions.
In May 2025, it was decided that all refugees who had received a decision on their asylum application, whether positive or negative, had to leave the camp within 30 days. This is often enforced by the police. The consequence is that recognised refugees are released from the camps only to find it impossible to fulfill the requirements to enter the accommodation and integration programme.
Even if the follow-up programme HELIOS + were to work, it would still be completely inadequate. Only a fraction of those who are supposed to benefit could be given support. Since the beginning of HELIOS, over the last years less than 5% of those entitled to join have actually benefited from it.
Due to completely inadequate basic services and the enormous difficulty of finding accommodation, many refugees decide to travel on to other EU countries. This is known as secondary migration. However, under EU law, other countries can then send them back to Greece because, according to the Dublin Regulation, the countries responsible for refugees are those they first entered within the EU. Because Greece is located at the EU's external border, it is uniquely burdened with this EU regulation. For a long time, Germany did not carry out any returns to Greece due to decisions by various courts on the grounds of ‘inhuman or degrading living conditions’. In April 2025, however, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that young, healthy, single men in particular could be deported to Greece because they could survive in the shadow economy and in dilapidated buildings. However, because the shadow economy in Greece often means an hourly wage of €2.50, it is not possible to live a dignified and, above all, legal life.
Through our work on the ground, we know that women and families have also been deported. For all of them, life after deportation is extremely harsh.
