Committee for Change ?
Published by deviousdiva February 29th, 2008 in Immigration.From the Athens News
PIRAEUS Mayor Panayotis Fasoulas has decided to create a special committee to assess the problems faced by his municipality’s immigrant residents and help local officials find solutions. This is part of the municipality’s local immigrant integration initiative.
A total of nine Piraeus municipal council members and four local immigrant community representatives will sit on the committee. This is the first time that immigrants have been invited to participate at a local government level.
Technorati: immigration, greece, piraeus, local government
it was about time local government adopted this kind of initiative. I hope this won’t be another case of big words and no action …
I also hope that the people chosen (by whom ? and how? ) to represent immigrants will live up to the standards required for such an initiative to work succesfully
First of all, Greece is the only EU(15) country that does not have a formal consultation of immigrant groups in formulation of immigration policy. The Interior Ministry started some informal consultations, but that is not good enough.
With this local government initiative, the big issue is how will the immigrant community representatives be chosen. In a democracy, there should be a formal process by which they are voted for within the immigrant community. Call me cynical, but I really doubt that this is how the Greeks will do it. After all, why would they change their usual way of doing things?
Interesting point made by MBE but how to do this without further institutionalizing divisions? Possibly a three tier register. 1. Citizens 2. EU citizens 3. Non EU residents. But then Bulgarians, Romanians and Poles would be lumped with UK citizens. Good thing or bad DD and MBE? I can’t help thinking that the crucial problem in Greece is that the route from 3 to 1 is made so difficult. If initiatives such as the Piraeus one (even if formalized a la MBE) are seen as feasible half way house then they might set the broader cause back. Over to those who actually live in Greece (we have our problems in the UK but they are very different).
Under EU law, Greeks and EU citizens have equal status: the main difference is not having the right to vote in national elections, although EU nationals can vote in local and EU elections. Under the Greek immigration laws 1991-2005, only non-EU nationals are considered as immigrants. Although there are transitional measures on the freedom of movement for the nationals of Romania and Bulgaria, Greece has agreed to treat them as full EU nationals if they reside in Greece. So, legally it is very clear that Bulgarians, Romanians and Poles have equal status to UK citizens in other EU countries.
In fact, the difficult case is with Albanians, some 70% (or more) of immigrants in Greece, who are still dependent on Greek legislation for their status in Greece.