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Article 59 (1) Asylum Code provides that the competent authority for the reception of asylum applicants in cooperation with competent government agencies, international organisations and certified social actors shall ensure the provision of material reception conditions. These conditions must ‘secure an adequate standard of living for asylum applicants that ensures their subsistence and protects their physical and mental health, based on the respect of human dignity’. As per the same article, the same standard of living is to be guaranteed for asylum applicants in detention. Special care is to be provided for those with special reception needs.[1]
Article 44 Asylum Code states that, during the reception and identification procedures, the Director (Διοικητής) and staff of the RIC or CCAC must ensure that third country nationals or stateless persons: a) live in decent living conditions, b) maintain their family unity, c) have access to emergency health care and necessary treatment or psychosocial support, d) receive the appropriate treatment, in case they belong to vulnerable groups, particularly if they are UAM or persons with disabilities, e) are sufficiently informed about their rights and obligations, f) have access to guidance and legal advice and assistance, g) maintain contact with institutions and civil society organisations active in the field of migration and human rights that provide legal or social assistance and h) have the right to communicate with their relatives and loved ones.
Asylum applicants are entitled to reception conditions from the time they make an asylum application and throughout the asylum procedure. As regards children, reception conditions apply to minors, unaccompanied or not, and to separated minors, regardless of whether they have made an application for international protection.[2] In case of status recognition, reception conditions are terminated (with exceptions) within 30 days of the notification of the positive decision. In the specific case of UAM, this time limit starts counting from the time they reach adulthood.[3]
The law also foresees that the provision of all or part of the material reception conditions presupposes that asylum applicants lack employment or that their employment does not provide them with sufficient resources to maintain an adequate standard of living that is sufficient to safeguard their health and sustenance.[4] The latter is examined in proportion to the financial criteria determining eligibility for the Social Solidarity Benefit (Κοινωνικό Επίδομα Αλληλεγγύης, KEA),[5] which was renamed to Minimum Guaranteed Income (Ελάχιστο Εγγυημένο Εισόδημα) in 2020.[6] The law also provides that reception conditions can be reduced or withdrawn following an individual and justified decision by the competent reception authority, based on the full set of grounds provided under Article 20 of the (recast) Reception Directive, including if it is established that the applicant concealed their financial resources or if they have lodged a subsequent asylum application.[7]
That being said, as in previous years, delays in accessing reception on account of chronic delays in accessing asylum on the mainland (see also Access to the procedure on the mainland) have persisted in 2025 as well. Recurrent interruptions of the online platform established by the MoMA for the purposes of booking appointments for the registration of asylum appplications in the summer of 2022,[8] and/or lack of available appointments for applicants to register their applications have remained a key reason for delays, which have continued resulting in risk of arbitrary arrest and detention of asylum seekers awaiting registration, and their non-access to reception conditions.[9]
In parallel, the MoMA’s practice of not acknowledging the acquisition of the status of asylum applicant to persons having already booked a registration appointment, in spite of a number of decisions by national courts on the matter during previous years,[10] likewise persisted in 2025, further consolidating the risk to which applicants awaiting for their registration are exposed on the Greek mainland. As increasingly observed by GCR’s Legal Unit, since 2023, this has frequently resulted in the arbitrary use of detention for the purpose of returning people who had already registered their will to apply for asylum via the platform. In at least eight cases represented by GCR in 2023, most of which concerned applicants from Afghanistan, competent First Instance Administrative Courts have also ruled that upon requesting the scheduling of the registration of an application for international protection via the platform, the persons concerned receive the status of an asylum applicant, as per the law. Yet, instead of reviewing the practice, the Greek authorities filled a request for the first of these Decisions to be revoked before the Administrative Court of Kavala. The application for revocation was rejected as inadmissible by the Court.[11] A petition for violation of EU law on the same issue has been filed by the GCR in December 2022 (CHAP(2022)03534), and is pending before the European Commission.[12]
Challenges with regards to the availability of interpretation also persisted in 2025, and particularly since early July, when the NGO METAdrasi was once more forced to halt its interpretation services in the camps, due to delays in the payment of more than 2.5 million euros owed to the organisation by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum.[13] As noted by RSA[14], “[t]he absence of interpretation inevitably means a lack of access to necessary services such as health care”. Up to 30 June 2025, a total of 128 interpreters were operating in the camps.[15] RSA reported that only 168 interpreters were deployed in RIS camps at the end of 2025, exclusively through emergency provision of staff by the EUAA.[16]
As noted by 36 civil society organisations in November 2024:[17] “Language barriers due to lack of interpretation can be particularly grave for people with vulnerabilities and urgent or complex medical needs, including those suffering from chronic illnesses or mental health conditions, as well as gender-based violence (GBV) survivors. With limited or non-existent interpreter assistance, vulnerability assessments are not always conducted properly. Beyond being a procedural oversight, lack of interpretation can further be a direct violation of the fundamental right to healthcare, as people are often left unable to communicate their symptoms, receive accurate diagnoses, or understand treatment instructions”. In this context, in December 2024, and in particular for the violation of the rights (access to asylum, to family reunification, to healthcare etc.) of vulnerable persons due to the chronic lack of interpretation, GCR had sent written interventions before the competent authorities, including the Greek Ombudsperson, for more than 60 vulnerable asylum applicants.
[1] Article 59(1) Asylum Code.
[2] Article 37(1) and 62(3) Asylum Code.
[3] Article 109 Asylum Code.
[4] Article 59(3) Asylum Code.
[5] Article 235 L 4389/2016.
[6] Article 29 L. 4659/2020.
[7] Article 61 Asylum Code.
[8] MoMA, Launch of the online application platform for asylum seeker registration appointments, 13 July 2022, available in Greek at: https://bit.ly/43PpBki. For more on the skype system, see MIT, Lives on Hold: Access to Asylum on Mainland Greece, Crete and Rhodes, November 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/3JOqBe2. MIT, Blocked from the system: Voices of people excluded from the asylum procedure on mainland Greece, Crete and Rhodes, May 2022, https://bit.ly/45wetd3. MIT, Statement on new registration asylum procedure, 1st September 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3Ms6Onu.
[9] Also see GCR, COMMUNICATION of the GREEK COUNCIL FOR REFUGEES to the COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS of the COUNCIL OF EUROPE (Rule 9.2.) with regard to the execution of M.S.S. (Application No. 30696/09) and H.A. and others (Application No. 4892/18) GROUP of cases, April 2025, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yzdmexdk, paras. 7-9 and stiftung Pro Asyl & RSA, Asylum System in Decline: Submission to the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers in the cases of M.S.S. v. Greece / H.A. v. Greece, April 2025, available at: https://tinyurl.com/45xm2pmk, paras. 7-10.
[10] For more, see previous AIDA reports on Greece, available at: https://asylumineurope.org/reports/country/greece/.
[11] An excerpt of the relevant decision (ΔΠρΚαβ ΑΡ516/2023) can be found in GCR, HIAS & RSA, Greek Asylum Case Law Report: Issue 1/2023, 5 July 2023, available (Greek) at: https://tinyurl.com/pejs4m9m, p. 57.
[12] For more see GCR, inter alia, “Απόφαση του Διοικητικού Πρωτοδικείου κρίνει παράνομη την επιστροφή και κράτηση προσώπου που έχει αιτηθεί μέσω της online πλατφόρμας του Υπουργείου τον προγραμματισμό της πλήρους καταγραφής του αιτήματος ασύλου”, February 2023, available in Greek at: https://tinyurl.com/722wkst2; “Administrative courts: The detention of asylum seekers pending full registration, to whom the Ministry of Immigration & Asylum does not recognize the status of applicant, is illegal”, available at: https://tinyurl.com/722wkst2; Administrative courts: The detention of asylum seekers pending full registration, to whom the Ministry of Migration & Asylum does not recognize the status of applicant, is illegal, 21 March 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/5n7arpsa.
[13] METAdrasi, “Provision of interpretation in refugee camps: Termination of the contract and months of delay in payment of the amounts due”, 16 July 2025, available at: https://tinyurl.com/5ycjzm57.
[14] RSA, Reception & refugee camps in Greece in the first half of 2025, 11 September 2025, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yp6ar5fu.
[15] Ibid.
[16] RSA Asylum procedure and reception statistics in Greece in 2025 https://tinyurl.com/392ftj58
[17] Reliefweb, Open Letter: Put an end to the disruption of interpretation services still undermining asylum seekers’ rights in Greece, Open letter signed by 36 NGOs, 1 November 2024, available here.