Installation of new pathway and lift has been criticised by archaeologists and called ‘a scandal’
When seen through the eyes of Manolis Korres, the architect who has long presided over the restoration of the Parthenon, the Acropolis needs no improvement at all.
In the face of such architectural mastery, he thinks of himself more as a maestro of order, making a monument that has survived explosions, fire, looting and earthquakes more understandable to the public.
Continue reading...Prime minister says system will be up and running before 1 July deadline and in time for tourist season
The Greek government has unveiled the first EU Covid passport, described by the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as a “fast lane to facilitate travel”, after a successful dry run of the technology.
At a launch in Athens, Mitsotakis, who had led calls for a way to open up Europe in time for the summer tourism season, said the system would be up and running in Greece before a deadline set by Brussels for 1 July.
Continue reading...Experts warn of a ‘huge ecological disaster’ after blaze in the Geraneia mountains
Hundreds of firefighters battled Greece’s first major forest fire of the summer on Saturday, as experts warned of a “huge ecological disaster” in a nature conservation area near Athens.
The fire, which broke out late on Wednesday in the Geraneia mountains 55 miles (90km) west of the capital, is “one of the biggest in the past 20 to 30 years, and has come early in the season”, fire chief Stefanos Kolokouris told ANT1 television.
Continue reading...Minister says country ‘shaken up’ by killing of Caroline Crouch, 20, while husband tied up and dog hung from banister
The Greek government has offered a €300,000 (about £257,000) reward to try to track down the culprits behind the murder of a British-born student in her suburban Athens home.
The reward was publicised hours after Caroline Crouch, 20, was strangled in front of her baby daughter by armed burglars who had bound her husband, Babis Anagnostopoulos, to a chair after breaking in. The intruders also killed the family’s dog, leaving it hanging from a banister in the house.
Continue reading...Mayor overseeing a green regeneration in city where temperatures can already surpass 40C
Like every Athens mayor, Kostas Bakoyannis is acutely aware of the illustrious heritage of one of the world’s oldest cities. After all, he says, it is busts of Pericles and his mistress Aspasia that adorn the entrance of the neoclassical town hall. From the windows of his cavernous office, he can glimpse the Parthenon through the jumble of concrete buildings and antennas.
But Bakoyannis prefers to talk about the present, not least his plans for fountains, parks and trees – antidotes to the afflictions of more modern times.
Continue reading...Chios case highlights deplorable conditions on islands despite EU allocating millions of euros to improve facilities, aid workers say
At a desolate refugee camp on the Greek island of Chios earlier this week, a young man died alone in a tent. By the time the guards arrived on the scene, about 12 hours after the Somali refugee’s death, the body was surrounded by rodents.
Asylum seekers who had initially alerted staff spoke in horror at seeing rats and mice swarming about.
Continue reading...A Guardian analysis finds EU countries used brutal tactics to stop nearly 40,000 asylum seekers crossing borders
EU member states have used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders during the pandemic, methods being linked to the death of more than 2,000 people, the Guardian can reveal.
In one of the biggest mass expulsions in decades, European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex, has systematically pushed back refugees, including children fleeing from wars, in their thousands, using illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention or transportation.
Continue reading...Countries across Europe are starting to relax coronavirus restrictions as case numbers fall
Counting on an accelerating vaccination campaign to keep new infections in check, much of continental Europe has announced plans for a gradual exit from lockdown over the coming weeks as case numbers begin to fall. Here is where things stand:
Belgium (at least one vaccine dose administered to 25% of whole population) aims to permit outside dining in restaurants and bars again on 8 May, with a mandatory 10pm closing time and tables limited to groups of four. Non-essential shops and hairdressers reopened on Monday.
Continue reading...Former leader of neo-Nazi party convicted in absentia in 2020 faces extradition to Athens
When the authorities caught up with Ioannis Lagos, they caught up with him fast. The MEP, once a feared leader of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, has been arrested hours after he was stripped of his immunity as an elected member of the European parliament and told he would be extradited to Athens.
Seized in his Brussels home on Tuesday, the convicted lawmaker had been sentenced to 13 years after a Greek court determined at the end of a landmark trial in 2020 that Golden Dawn was a criminal organisation masquerading as a political party.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions
The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.
The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.
Continue reading...UN-led meeting in Geneva aims to re-energise efforts to end dispute four years after talks collapsed
Leaders from either side of Cyprus’s ethnic divide have flown to Geneva for a UN-led summit aimed at exploring whether the time is ripe to resume the peace process four years after the collapse of talks to reunify the island.
The foreign ministers of Greece, Turkey and Britain – Cyprus’s three guarantor powers – will join Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot teams in the hope of re-energising efforts to end the west’s longest-running dispute.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru
Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus jab rolled out after backing from European Medicines Agency
EU member states are starting to administer Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine after Europe’s drug regulator this week backed the single-dose shot, with several expected to impose age restrictions, as with the AstraZeneca jab.
Spain’s regional health authorities began using the shot on Thursday for people aged 70 to 79, two days after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced a possible link to a rare clotting disorder but stressed the shot’s benefits outweighed the risks.
Continue reading...Ahtisham Khan arrived in Greece, aged 16, after leaving Pakistan. A new initiative is helping children like him find a safe home where they can start to rebuild their lives
At some point in his journey to a freer place, Ahtisham Khan came to a fork in the road. Fifty days of travel from his native Pakistan to the plains of northern Greece had been unexpectedly frightening and exhausting.
“We had a lot of dreams,” he says, recalling why he and his brother, Zeeshan, left their village close to the city of Haripur in Pakistan. “We were teenagers … we didn’t know what we were embarking on. We did what we had to do to survive.”
Continue reading...The poet’s generosity 200 years ago helped to pave the way to independence, and he is still seen as a hero
Racked by fever, prone to fits of delirium, consumed by his last great passion – the liberation of Greece – Lord Byron lay on his sickbed. It was 18 April 1824. The great Romantic poet would be dead the next day.
“I have given her [Greece] my time, my means, my health,” he is recorded as saying in a moment of lucidity. “And now I give her my life! What could I do more?”
Continue reading...Reporters Without Borders speaks of pressures on press freedom after murder of Giorgos Karaivaz in Athens last week
The murder of a high-profile Greek journalist last week marks the fourth killing of a reporter in Europe in the past five years and has underlined growing concerns about a steady decline of press freedoms in several EU member states.
Related: Greek crime journalist shot dead in Athens in ‘execution-style’ murder
Continue reading...In experiment organised by Dutch government, travellers will have to take regular Covid tests and are barred from leaving resort
A regime that might, in more normal times, resemble a boot camp has been happily embraced by 189 Dutch tourists who traded lockdown in the Netherlands for eight days of voluntary confinement at a Greek beach resort.
In an experiment devised by travel industry experts determined not to lose another season to Covid-19, the tourists arrived on the Aegean island of Rhodes on Monday as part of a test run to see if safe holidays can be arranged during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Government says killing of Giorgos Karaivaz, reportedly by two men on a motorbike, has ‘shocked us all’
A prominent Greek crime journalist has been shot dead in what was described as an “execution-style” murder near his home in Athens.
Giorgos Karaivaz, who sought to illuminate Greece’s seamier underside with his coverage of law and order stories on the private Star TV channel, died of gunshot wounds outside his home in the south of the city.
Continue reading...From France to Spain, Germany to Greece, tight rules are in place to contain the spread of coronavirus
Europe may not be subject to the drastic lockdown measures introduced to combat the first wave of coronavirus a year ago, but many countries still face another Easter of greatly reduced meeting and movement.
In France, new restrictions come into effect across the country from 7pm on Saturday that limit travel to within 10km (six miles) of home, absent one of the allowed “imperative” reasons. Sworn declarations known as “attestations” will be necessary for anyone travelling outside these rules.
Continue reading...Several thousand Germans head to Crete and Balearic islands as pandemic third wave spreads across EU
The first foreign tourists may have landed in locked-down Spain and Greece, but as a third wave of the pandemic accelerates across the EU, few Europeans will be enjoying an Easter break abroad – or even away from home.
German holidaymakers began arriving on Crete on Monday, with six half-empty flights landing at Heraklion airport after the tourist minister, Haris Theoharis, said some visitors could be permitted before the country’s planned reopening on 14 May.
Continue reading...