Refugee crisis grows in Greece as EU "looks on"

Over a period of a few days in mid-November, the steady stream of small rubber boats carrying refugees and migrants over the choppy, chilly waters separating Turkey and the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean slowed to a trickle. "We didn't know why," an official from the Greek Interior Ministry told DW.

Griechenland Flüchtlinge aus Eritrea vor RhodosDespite much-hyped EU summits and agreements, Greece has yet to see much substantive practical support in dealing with the refugee crisis, as Pavlos Zafiropoulos writes from Athens.

Had Turkish officials begun clamping down on the criminal rings of people smugglers? Had EU border closures and tougher rhetoric begun to deter people from making the hazardous crossing? Was it the weather? "We later found out that they had sold out of rubber boats," the official said with a grim laugh. "When new shipments came in the arrivals picked back up."...............

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