|Published on: 24th July 2026|Categories: News|
The updated AIDA Country Report on Greece provides a detailed overview on legislative and practice-related developments in asylum procedures, reception conditions, detention of asylum applicants and content of international protection in 2025. It is accompanied by an annex which provides an overview of temporary protection, and responses from Greek authorities.
A number of key developments drawn from the overview of the main changes that have taken place since the publication of the update on 2024 are set out below.
(A) International protection
Asylum procedure
- Statistics: Arrivals to Greece dropped by 21%, to 48,298 in 2025, but entry dynamics shifted drastically toward the south. There was a 20% decrease in first-time asylum applications in 2025 compared to 2024, but a 33% increase in subsequent applications. The majority of applicants were from Afghanistan (15,296), Egypt (9,548), Sudan (8,179), Syria (3,511), and Bangladesh (3,132). Total pending applications at first instance rose by 6%. 37,868 in-merit decisions were issued, the majority of which granted refugee (64.3%) or subsidiary protection (6.3%) status. The recognition rate at second instance was 6.5%. Overall, 27,181 individuals were granted international protection in Greece in 2025 (at first or second instance).
- Push-back practices: Allegations of pushbacks continued to be reported in 2025.
- Access to the procedure: In July 2025, the Greek government imposed a three month suspension on the submission of asylum applications by persons arriving irregularly by watercraft from North Africa, resulting in the blanket administrative detention of newcomers.
- Safe third country: On 27 February 2025, the Greek Council of State annulled the Joint Ministerial Decision (JMD) designating Türkiye as a safe third country. However, in April 2025, the Greek government issued a new JMD re-designating Türkiye as a safe third country for applicants from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Despite this, the number of safe third country decisions fell by 78% at first instance and 91% at second instance. The new JMD was again challenged before the Council of State.
- Syria: The Asylum Service suspended decisions for Syrian nationals to reassess country of origin information, leading to the first-ever substantive in-merit rejections of international protection for Syrian applicants in 2025.
- Restriction of safeguards for children: In August 2025, a new JMD severely rolled back procedural safeguards for unaccompanied minors, mandating that all age-assessment phases (physical, psychosocial, and X-ray) must occur within a single day, while explicitly giving primacy to radiological findings over holistic evaluations.
Reception conditions
- Statistics: 50,840 persons were registered by the Reception and Identification Service during 2025, the majority of whom men (39,903) and women (10,937), primarily between the ages of 18 to 34. Slightly more than 1 in 5 of those registered were minors, most of whom 13 years old and younger (6,214), while close to 1 in 3 of those registered, were registered as vulnerable (15,345). The main registered nationalities were those from Afghanistan (13,471), Sudan (8,641) and Egypt (7,837).
- Systemic Access Gaps: Delays in accessing reception persisted throughout 2025, driven by chronic, structural blockages in accessing the asylum procedure on the mainland.
Detention of asylum applicants
- Detention statistics: 22,520 detention orders were issued during 2025 following a removal decision (a 17.6% increase compared to 2024). In addition, 3,280 asylum seekers were detained in pre-removal detention centers (a 36.5% decrease compared to 2024). The number of third country nationals under administrative detention at the end of 2025 was 2,586, with 32.5% detainees being asylum applicants. 431 unaccompanied minors were detained during 2025.
- Expansion of detention grounds and time limits: A new law expanded administrative detention grounds, criminalized “illegal stay”, and lengthened maximum administrative detention limits from 18 to 24 months, extending the possible duration of migration-related detention to 48 months (24 months in the context of asylum and 24 months in view of removal).
- Deficiencies in Judicial Review: Structural deficits in the automatic oversight of the legality of detention remained in 2025. Out of 25,497 police detention orders, less than 1% were overturned via ex officio judicial reviews.
Content of international protection
- Statistics: 96,438 international protection residence permits were active at the end of 2025, concerning primarily nationals of Afghanistan (35.8%), Syria (20.2%), Palestine (11.5%), Iraq (8.1%) and Eritrea (4%).
- Renewal bottlenecks: Delays in the renewal of residence permits persisted in 2025, with 7,640 renewal applications pending at the Asylum Service at year’s end, in several cases for over a year.
- De-facto re-examinations: In late 2025 and early 2026, the Hellenic Police initiated a highly restrictive practice during the residence permit renewal stage, demanding that beneficiaries under the “old procedure” submit proof within 20 days detailing why they still face persecution. This effectively functioned as a merits re-examination, sparking non-renewals and cessations of protection, particularly for Afghan nationals.
- Mass revocations: Between March and April 2026, the Asylum Service proceeded with the mass revocation of refugee status for 1,203 Syrian nationals.
- Intensified European returns: Readmissions of recognized refugees from other EU Member States intensified during 2025.
(B) Temporary protection
Temporary protection procedure
- Statistics: 38,138 people were granted temporary protection or received temporary protection cards in Greece since 2022, 5,566 of which during 2025. The majority of beneficiaries since 2022 have been women (26,759), mostly between the ages of 35 and 64.
- More favourable domestic terms continue to apply to individuals who left Ukraine from 26 November 2021 onwards, and no entry denials were reported at the borders.
Content of temporary protection
- Housing: The main form of accommodation provided to beneficiaries of temporary protection in Greece was reception centres and the Helios+ integration programme. As of 31 March 2026, Ukrainian nationals represented close to 32% of the Helios+ programme’s total beneficiaries, with temporary protection beneficiaries representing close to 42% of total households benefiting from the programme’s rental subsidy.
The full report is available here, the annex on temporary protection is available here, and the responses from the Greek authorities are available here.
For more information about AIDA or to read other AIDA reports, please visit the AIDA website.
