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

70 The Greek and European challenge dren living in and out ofshelters. From our data we see that 40 to 50% of the unac- companied children living in Greece today are cases waiting for family reunifica- tion and reloca-tion to other eu member states, many of them more than one year. So, how efficient is to ask from a small country to create 2.300 places inshelters when the main problem is the unnecessary delays to accelerate theprocess of family reunification and the relocation program? Just some weeks ago Germany announces that is accepting the transfer of only 70 family re-unification cases per month. with 2.300 cases waiting their reunification with their families in Germany, you can calculate how long this will take to happen: 3 years! How easy is to explain to a child that his departure is postponed? How easy is to explain to an unaccompanied child called Ali, from Syria that because he arrived in Greece on 25 March 2016, 5 days after the eu-turkey deal, he can- not enter the relocation program and he has to leave in a camp out of school? Let’s say that we have the magic want and we can send tomorrow these 800 kids from Greece to their destination what will happen? Greece will not need to create any more shelters. So using bureaucracy and administrative delays as a strategic tool to brake on migration flows adds further misery to refugee and migrant popu- lations and ultimately just leads them to further – often dangerous and illegal – movement. All these children have a mobile phone and speak frequently with friends and rela- tives inside and outside the eu and collect often conflicting informa-tion about how easy or difficult the illegal onward journey is. And about how to gather mon- ey to pay the smugglers. So, the conditions in which they live, together with the interminable de-lays, are two basic reasons driving them on to secondary move- ments. And the only real winners are the people smugglers and traffickers. The Greek challenge is to make use of this crisis, to create and establish along- term plan to build a proper protection mechanism for the unaccompaniedchildren in Greece. from the first step, which is the identification to the last step, integra- tion. to make good use of eu funding, to coordinate and make good use of all ac- tors, international organisations, NGOs and donors, and finally to support pioneer successful initiatives such as semi independent living for minors, shelters for those reaching adulthood, guardianship, foster care system. Good practices that have been applied, for many years mainly from nGos in other eu counties. On the other hand, eu member States have to understand that closing ourselves down in our respective fortresses and continuing as we did before isdefinitely not the answer. That whatever decisions are taken, such as the im-plementation of the eu deal, are done so, with short-term political horizons in mind, and bureau- cratic delays are used as excuses to defer taking difficult decisions or to postpone implementing, for example, the relocation targets countries had earlier commit- ted to from Greece to other eu countries. Short cuts and approximations in the