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On 9 Could, Egypt’s Minister of Labor Hassan Shehata and Greek Minister of Immigration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis (New Democracy, proper), met in Cairo and agreed to kick-start the incorporation of 5,000 Egyptian seasonal staff into Greece’s agricultural sector. The plan had already been mentioned in 2022 below an settlement to boost cooperation between the 2 nations on migration.
Rushed to return into impact after the signature, in March 2024, of the EU’s €7.4 billion-worth strategic and complete partnership to help Egypt and battle irregular migration, the choice additionally responds to Greece’s deep labour scarcity, particularly within the agriculture sector.
Regardless of holding the second-highest unemployment fee within the EU simply after Spain, Greece has benefited from an agriculture sector sustained by overseas staff because the arrival of Albanians within the early 90’s. Nonetheless, the perpetuation of indecent working circumstances is making even migrant staff depart Greece for higher alternatives, forcing the federal government to resort to bilateral agreements such because the current one with Egypt, however not completely.
Greece additionally signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bangladesh in 2022, which claimed it might begin bringing in 4,000 Bangladeshi staff per 12 months on an everyday method in addition to begin the regularisation strategy of the hundreds already in Greece.
Though the regularisation of a lot of these already within the nation has been profitable, newcomers hardly come, and in the event that they do, they depart, Vasilis Kerasiotis, a Greek migration lawyer who served as authorized marketing consultant within the elaboration of the Greece-Bangladesh bilateral settlement, informed Voxeurop.
Whereas he says that these agreements “set a minimal background for authorized staff and authorized entry procedures”, and that “documented individuals are much less weak to undergo from exploitation”, he notes that “if the agreements usually are not correctly carried out they’re pointless”. Kerasiotis doubts that the folks coming below such agreements will stay in Greece, “these arriving below different immigration legal guidelines have left, they don’t keep”. The rationale for that being that the circumstances seen at Greece’s harvest fields stay little totally different than these judged towards by the European Courtroom of Human Rights (ECHR) within the case often called “Manolada”.