Greece Aims to Streamline Residence Permit Process for Legal Migrants

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Greece has unveiled plans to make it easier for legal migrants to obtain and renew residence permits.
• the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum said that 2024 is the “year of legal migration”.
• Greece plans to process 850,000 migration files by the first half of 2026.

Greece is planning to make it easier for migrants legally residing in the country to obtain and renew residence permits.

Calling 2024 the “year of legal migration”, the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Dimitris Kairidis, revealed that the country is currently working on a draft law that will modernise the process of granting and renewing residence permits to legal migrants in the country.

As Ansa explains, in line with the current rules that Greece has, the process of obtaining residence permits currently lasts up to two years.

In order to accelerate the process of issuing such documents, a modernisation of the administrative mechanism is planned.

Minister Kairidis stressed that within the first six months of this year, the country will open four new biometric data collection centres. Three of these centres will open in Athens, and one will open in Thessaloniki.

Within the first half of 2024, four new biometric data collection centres will be opened, three in Athens and one in Thessaloniki, to free up staff.

Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Dimitris Kairidis

In a statement directed to the Greek Parliament, Minister Kairidis said that it is very common for migrants to “suffer for years” when applying for the renewal of their residence permit despite having legally lived and worked in the country as well as paying taxes and contributions.

Minister Kairidis further emphasised that the modernisation of this process would permit up to 850,000 migration files to be processed by the first half of 2026.

He further noted that it is very important that the country significantly reduces the time needed to process these types of applications to make the lives of migrants in the country easier.

Greece has already made some changes in this regard. In December of last year, the country passed a law that gives migrants the right to obtain a three-year residence permit as well as a work permit.

Such a law was approved amid the country’s labour shortages in different sectors across its territory.

Back when the law was passed, the Greek Ministry of Labour said that around 30,000 undocumented migrants would benefit from this measure. However, it was stressed that only those who have lived in Greece for at least three years would qualify for the residence and work permits.

Data updated by UNHCR in mid-December 2023 show that around 45,996 migrants entered Greece. The country currently needs to process a high number of applications.