Greek lawmakers voted on Friday (July 11) to temporarily stop processing asylum requests from migrants arriving from North Africa by sea in a bid to reduce arrivals into Europe's southernmost tip, a move rights groups and opposition parties have called illegal.

The ban comes amid a surge in migrants reaching the island of Crete and after talks with Libya's Benghazi-based government to stem the flow were canceled acrimoniously this week.

It marks a further hardening of Greece's stance towards migrants under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' center-right government, which has built a fence at its northern land borders and boosted sea patrols since it came to power in 2019.

Human rights groups accuse Greece of forcefully turning back asylum-seekers on its sea and land borders. This year, the European Union border agency said it was reviewing 12 cases of potential human rights violations by Greece.

The government denies wrongdoing.

The law, which received 177 votes in favour and 74 against, halts asylum processing for at least three months and allows authorities to quickly repatriate migrants without any prior identification process.

"Faced with the sharp increase in irregular arrivals by sea from North Africa, particularly from Libya to Crete, we have taken the difficult but absolutely necessary decision to temporarily suspend the examination of asylum applications," Mitsotakis was quoted by his office as telling the German newspaper Bild on Friday.

"Greece is not a gateway to Europe open to everyone."

Greece was on the front line of a migration crisis in 2015-16 when hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa passed through its islands and mainland.

Since then, flows have dropped off dramatically. While there has been a rise in arrivals to the outlying islands of Crete and Gavdos - those numbers have quadrupled to over 7,000 so far this year - sea arrivals to Greece as a whole dropped by 5.5% to 17,000 in the first half of this year, U.N. data show.

Rights groups and opposition parties said the ban approved by parliament violates human rights.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

ATHENS, GREECE (JULY 11, 2025) (PARLIAMENT TV - Access all)

1. PARLIAMENT BEFORE VOTE

2. OPPOSITION PASOK PARTY LAWMAKER PAVLOS CHRISTIDIS SPEAKING BEFORE VOTE

3. (SOUNDBITE) (Greek) OPPOSITION PASOK PARTY LAWMAKER PAVLOS CHRISTIDIS SAYING:

"You know very well that the suspension of asylum means a suspension or delay in returns. What you are doing will lead to them being trapped, to people staying in the country without the prospect of immediate return."

4. PARLIAMENT BEFORE VOTE

5. (SOUNDBITE) (Greek) OPPOSITION SYRIZA PARTY LAWMAKER GIORGIOS PSYCHOGIOS SAYING:

"With what you are doing, you are creating grey zones for people who don't fit into any status, they are in essence invisible, they cannot go forward or back, they will be trapped, and they will stay in the country until their status is clarified."

6. MIGRATION MINISTER THANOS PLEVRIS SPEAKING TO PARLIAMENT

7. (SOUNDBITE) (Greek) MIGRATION MINISTER THANOS PLEVRIS SAYING:

"It is a completely balanced regulation. The (European) Commission made an announcement that it respects what you, who are voting today on constitutionality, do not respect, the Commission respects that the country is in emergency conditions. There are similar decisions, especially those of Spain, which received corresponding pressure in the characteristics of the invasion, as we have at the moment at the pace at which they are taking place, and the European Court of Human Rights accepted them."

8. PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKER PREPARING TO ANNOUNCE VOTE

9. PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKER READING OUT RESULTS, SAYING: "177 VOTED YES, 74 NO, PRESENT, 42".

10. RESULTS OF VOTE ON ELECTRONIC BOARD

11. PARLIAMENT