Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-09-08

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] One gold, one bronze for Team Greece on 1st day at Rio Paralympics

[02] Mouzalas, Ozturk discuss EU-Turkey agreement on migration in Istanbul

[03] Two programmes to support media-sector employment if TV stations close

[01] One gold, one bronze for Team Greece on 1st day at Rio Paralympics

The two athletes earned Greece its first medals at the Rio Paralympics and helped boost morale for the whole team, which hopes to climb as high as possible in the general rankings.

"The successes of Greek athletes at #Rio2016 continue to make us proud," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras posted in a tweet, congratulating Konstantinidis on winning the gold medal and breaking the world record, and Zisidis on winning the bronze.

[02] Mouzalas, Ozturk discuss EU-Turkey agreement on migration in Istanbul

"We expressed our support for the problems caused by the coup attempt and our opposition to the coup," Mouzalas told Greek correspondents after the meeting. He said the Greek government was holding talks since the problem affected Greek territory and Turkey was a neighbouring country, making suggestions and proposals to improve implementation.

Mouzalas noted the significant reduction in refugee flows to Greece compared with the same period last year. This indicated that Turkey was holding up its end of the agreement, he added. While there had been a slight increase in flows after the coup attempt, there was no indication from the meeting that this was a result of political intention, the minister said.

Commenting on the slow implementation in terms of returning the migrants arriving in Greece to Turkey, Mouzalas noted that those arriving immediately applied for asylum and thus significantly slowed the process, so that there were now 9,500 asylum seekers on Greek islands whereas only a dozen or so returned each day.

The Greek side also reported the addition of two new routes for refugees to Greece since the coup, toward Rhodes and Kalymnos, with the Turkish side offering assurances that the problem will be dealt with. Greece also asked that Turkey agree to the return of refugees that are transferred from islands to other parts of Greece because they have displayed delinquent behaviour, since the agreement currently stipulates that returns can only be made for refugees on the islands.

The two sides also agreed to the appointment of coast guard attaches at the Greek embassy in Ankara and the Turkish embassy in Athens, while they also discussed the eight Turkish military officers that fled Turkey after the coup and sought refuge in Greece, applying for asylum.

Mouzalas also dismissed suggestions that refugee flows had fallen because countries on the 'Balkan Route' had closed their borders, pointing out that 1000-1300 continued to arrive each day before the EU-Turkey deal was signed, even with the borders closed to the north. The EU had also significant behind with its pledges to help Greece, he added. Only 19 of the 400 specialist staff pledged to Greece to help process asylum applications had arrived, he pointed out, and Europe had so far relocated on 3,000 of the 66,000 refugees it had promised to relocate in two years.

[03] Two programmes to support media-sector employment if TV stations close

In statements as he left the government headquarters, Katrougalos said the government had presented two programmes designed for this purpose and said the meeting was conducted in a good atmosphere, ending in an initial agreement with the media staff unions.

"The issue of private television is, primarily, an issue of applying the rule of law and tackling graft...but we also desire that no media employee should lose their job and become unemployed," Katrougalos said. According to the minister, the aim of the programmes was to take measures to prevent even more unemployment in the sector - where most media enterprises had already laid off between a quarter or half of their staff - if owners decided not to continue operating their channels in other ways, such as through the internet or as subscription channels.

Katrougalos said the two programmes would operate by subsidising job positions through the conversion of unemployment benefit into a "job benefit" that each person made redundant could transfer to the media enterprise of their choice. The employer would then be required to make up the difference to the salary envisioned by the last collective labour agreement in force. The programme would have a 24-month duration, equal to the period of unemployment benefit, and enterprises that received the benefit would be barred from laying off staff during that time.

The second programme will be financed by the Globalisation Fund designed to support SMEs, allowing those who chose not to find another job in the media sector to begin their own small or micro-enterprise, such as a new website.

"Our commitment was and remains that no one should be made unemployed through the return of legality to the channels," he added. He also pointed out that the government's main intervention in support of employment was to raise the legal minimum of staff for the new channels, from 200 to 400.

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article