ΑΛΛΗΛΕΓΓΥΗ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΕ: ΕΞΕΛΙΞΕΙΣ ΣΤΟ ΠΕΔΙΟ ΤΗΣ ΠΡΟΣΦΥΓΙΚΗΣ ΠΡΟΣΤΑΣΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΡΟΚΛΗΣΕΙΣ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ

62 EU Solidarity in managing migration flows through ECHO in Greece 3/2016-3/2019 As far as institutional challenges, the division of responsibility between DG ECHO or DG HOME was never clearly defined when drafting ESI. DG ECHO is mostly tech- nocratic in nature (on grant agreements and partner supervision), whereas DG HOME is designing EU priorities together with the European Council, taking into account different national interests and therefore politics. Synergies because of ESI did improve overtime, according to the internal evaluation of the European Commission, however, valuable resources and time were lost. It soon became evident that by internalizing a policy of humanitarian assistance, the EU institutions, as well as ECHO partner humanitarian actors could not really distance themselves from an EU member state, which was involved in both the design and the decisions taken by the European Council. ECHO could not distance itself from decisions taken by DG HOME, either. Indeed, no common strategy exist- ed within the EU on which actions would continue and under what type of funding after the new mechanism was put into place. Until ESI, DG ECHO would dispatch funds outside the EU and there was seldom a need to coordinate with other EU member state funding opportunities 54 . ESI however needed to take into account coordination and exit strategies based on sustainability in the concerned EU mem- ber State. Such decisions, which are political and often quite delicate have af- fected the nature, efficiency and effectiveness of assistance offered by the newly established “emergency mechanism”. This is not only assessed through the lenses of the principled humanitarian action, but also the concept of “coherence” of the relief programs implemented in Greece during the three-year period. How could they be coherent to the relevant ESI mechanism, when they seemed to be insuffi- ciently cognizant of the political origins of vulnerability in many groups arriving in Greece? Projects seemed unable to even lead to appropriate responses, and were inadvertently fueling tensions with several stakeholders on the ground. This was especially true during the first months of the program, when there was an awareness of the limitations facing humanitarian actors due to a lack of an overall strategy on the management of the migration crisis by the EU (no coordi- nation among different funding programs, or among institutions, or implement- ing actors), or due to the varied interests of Member States, topped up by a total absence of a master national plan on how to deal with 50.000-70.000 of refugees/ migrants present in Greece 55 . The difficulty in reaching political compromises with a coherent and robust strategy was reflected in the projects themselves. 54. See the evaluation study of the mechanism, footnote40. 55. According to the internal evaluation report the first 8 months involved a dispatch of huge amounts of funding that made the ESI less cost-effective mechanism, compared to other countries where ECHO funds similar projects. Of course, extending the mechanism from 18 months to three years, improved the overall statistics.