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Abstract
This PhD dissertation analyses the implementation of the EU’s safe third country policy in Greece between 2016 and 2024. Safe third country policies are asylum policies that restrict access to international protection on the basis that there is another third country, with which asylum seekers have a connection and that is ‘safe’ enough, where they should apply for protection. The EU’s safe third country policy was implemented at scale for the first – and only – time in Greece, in the context of the return policy of the EU-Turkey Joint Statement of 2016.
In this study, I explore the evolution of the implementation of this policy by using an interpretive approach. To explain the outcome of the implementation of this policy, I focus on the ‘meanings’ (the identities, fears, desires, norms, ideas...) behind the choices of policy actors - at all levels of governance - who played a role in the implementation process. I show that the ‘safe third country’ concept was a sort of an empty box, whose content was shaped and reshaped over time by the policy actors’ preferences and the constantly evolving power relations between them. As a result of this dynamic, I highlight how, in different moments, asylum seekers with very different profiles, protection needs, and links to Turkey could (or could not) be rejected on the ground that the latter was a ‘safe’ third country for them.
In conclusion, I argue that, despite all human rights guarantees, the EU safe country policies and similar externalisation policies will always risk violating refugee rights. They will do so as long as the dominant ‘meanings’ behind them will be to restrict access to international protection, and to deter and deport asylum seekers.