Greece: National report on the evaluation mechanism of the integration of beneficiaries of international protection

This is the third national report produced under the National Integration Evaluation Mechanism (NIEM) project for Greece, by ANTIGONE, entitled “National report on the evaluation mechanism of the integration of beneficiaries of international protection”.

The report examines legal and statistical and policy indicators in order to assess the integration of beneficiaries of international protection (i.e. refugees, beneficiaries of temporary or subsidiary protection, and refugees with humanitarian aid status).  The report provides analysis of the following 13 pillars of integration:

1. Impact of reception
2. Mainstreaming
3. Residency
4. Family union and reunification
5. Citizenship
6. Housing
7. Employment
8. Vocational Training and Employment related education
9. Health
10. Social security
11. Education
12. Language and social learning
13. Building bridges

The report is divided into three main sections and includes, as well as indicator-related analysis, information on relevant legislative developments in Greece and COVID-19-related protection measures.

The NIEM project was a six-year transnational project supporting key actors to improve the integration of beneficiaries of international protection. NIEM established a mechanism for conducting comprehensive integration assessments to provide evidence of gaps in integration standards, identify promising practices and evaluate the outcomes of legislative and policy changes. The project developed an online toolkit to collect data and report the results. 

This final report looks at gaps identified in previous NIEM national reports that still remain unresolved. In Greece, there remain significant administrative barriers that hinder access by beneficiaries of international protection to the residence permit procedure, as Greek administrative services are slow and heavily bureaucratic. A few positive developments are presented in the report, but these have been undermined by the frequency of legislative amendments.