Greece carries out first relocation of refugees to Luxembourg

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece relocated six asylum-seeking families to Luxembourg on Wednesday, the first such transfer from its soil under an European Union plan to ease the burden on nations inundated by an influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

   Smiling parents holding young children posed for "selfies" with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn beside a Greek airliner on the runway before boarding the flight from Athens, live footage showed.

   "Thirty in the face of thousands who have fled their homes in Syria and Iraq is a drop in the ocean," Tsipras said. "But we hope that this becomes a stream, and then a river of humanity and shared responsibility, because these are the principles upon which the European Union was built."

   About 86 people have already been transferred directly from Italy to Sweden and Finland under the scheme. But some EU member states have not signed up to it, citing a lack of resources and infrastructure or fears their stability and security could be at risk from taking in large numbers of migrants.

   "The relocation of Iraqi and Syrian refugees that we saw today is an encouraging signal we are moving in the right direction," European Parliament head Martin Schulz said during a visit to Athens. "It is not sufficient that (only) eight states of the EU are participating in the relocation. This is a common challenge."

   The two-year, 780-million-euro ($852 million), relocation scheme is funded by the 28-member European Union. More than 590,000 refugees have entered crisis-hit Greece via its long Mediterranean sea boundary with Turkey this year, putting even more pressure on a country struggling to lift itself out of its debt crisis.

Πηγή: thestar.com