The New Greek Tragedy: Discordance between Greece and the European Union in the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis

After the onset of the Syrian civil conflict, over one million refugees and asylum seekers landed on Greece’s shores, and were met with chaotic asylum processing, uncoordinated non-governmental organizations, and generally debilitating discordance among all actors responsible for service provisions. (UNHCR, n.d.) Despite a long history of an obligation to burden sharing, the European Union failed to implement cross-regional policies to support Greece. And despite building policies to expedite immigration processing, the SYRIZA-led government in Greece failed to implement substantive improvement to the migratory pathway. Finally, this mismanagement is fatal, and has resulted in migrant isolation, entrapment, and in the worse cases, death. This research seeks to identify the causes of the persistence of this painful mismanagement of the humanitarian crisis, especially within camps, in Greece. To answer this question, this research will look at two common explanations for the mismanagement of camps: those that blame the Greek federal government and those that blame the European Union. Ultimately, however, this research will argue that it is the relationship between both the Greek state and the EU, marked by tension and discordance, which makes the problem of mismanagement of the crisis so persistent