The European Commission has said that that Greece is seriously neglecting its obligations to fingerprint and control migration in a new draft report.There are serious deficiencies in the carrying out of external border controls that must be overcome and dealt with by the Greek authorities, said the EC in a Schengen Evaluation Report on Greece.Crucially, the report finds that there is no effective identification and registration of irregular migrants and that fingerprints are not being systematically entered into the system.Travel documents are also not being systematically checked for the authenticity or against crucial security databases, such as SIS, Interpol and national databases."Substantial improvements are needed to ensure the proper reception, registration, relocation or return of migrants in order to bring Schengen functioning back to normal, without internal border controls. This is our ultimate common goal," said European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos in launching the report.According to the report's findings, Athens is likely to be given three months to improve, after which neighbouring Schengen states could be advised to reintroduce temporary border controls.However, because Greece has no land borders with the rest of the Schengen zone, new frontier checks will only likely affect air and sea ports.
EC warns Greece on migrant border controls
