Germany to take up to 500 children from Greek camps

Germany will welcome up to 500 unaccompanied minors from Greek migrant camps in the coming weeks, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday, while urging other EU countries to follow suit.

"We said (to the Greek authorities and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) that we want to take in between 350 and 500 children in the next few weeks," Maas said in an interview with the RTL/ntv broadcaster.

The minister said he hoped other countries would also take in young migrants. "We want to set an example here." The German cabinet on Wednesday agreed to initially accept 50 children from overcrowded camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios.

The "unaccompanied minors under the age of 14" will be placed in quarantine for two weeks in the state of Lower Saxony before relocating to different regions of the country, according to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

A test for the new coronavirus will also be carried out no more than three days before their arrival in Germany. Transfers from the migrant camps could begin next week, an Interior Ministry statement said on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of asylum-seekers live in dire circumstances in Greek camps, and conditions have worsened recently due to outbreaks of the coronavirus. Ten European countries have agreed to participate in an EU programme announced at the beginning of March to take in some of the 1,600 vulnerable minors in Greek camps.

However, most have yet to take any concrete action, with border restrictions imposed by the coronavirus crisis complicating the situation. German Development Minister Gerd Mueller has called the camps a "disgrace", and urged Brussels to act to avert a "catastrophe".

"Apart from Luxembourg, we are the only ones who are still willing to accept minors," Maas said on Wednesday. Luxembourg has agreed to take in 12 minors. Other countries that said they would participate are Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Ireland, Lithuania and Portugal.

Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has also called for more action. "In recent weeks we have flown 300,000 EU citizens back to the European Union from all over the world because of the virus outbreak. Surely it should be possible to get several thousand young people out of Greece for humanitarian reasons," he said in an interview with German broadcaster RND.

Claudia Roth, a German Green party politician and vice-president of the Bundestag, told news agency DPA that the government decision to accept 50 minors was "long overdue and just a drop in the ocean". German NGO Pro Asyl, meanwhile, said the plan was "completely insufficient" and called for the camps to be evacuated immediately.