Today, 88 refugees landed in Hanover: 19 children in need of medical care along with their immediate families and two unaccompanied minors who joined their mother in Germany under the family reunification procedure of the Dublin Regulation. This brings the total number of refugees admitted from Greece since April 2020 to 1,519.

These 18 families consist of 34 adults and 52 minors. They will be admitted by the federal states of Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony.

Following agreement within the Federal Government and a decision by the coalition committee at its meeting on 8 March 2020, Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer decided at that time to admit 243 children needing medical care and their immediate families from refugee camps in Greece, as part of a European aid effort. Today’s flight was the last charter flight in this effort to admit this group of people. Three additional families will soon be brought to Germany by scheduled flights, bringing the operation largely to a close. 

In addition, after the fires at the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, the Federal Government also decided to take in 150 of 400 unaccompanied minors. All of them have now been admitted to Germany.

Furthermore, in addition to these unaccompanied minors, the Federal Government decided to admit a further 1,553 family members from the Greek islands whom the Greek government had already found to be entitled to protection.

The refugees are being relocated to the various federal states based on a plan developed by the Federal Government together with the governments of all 16 federal states. This plan takes into account criteria such as family ties and specific medical needs.