On September 16, 2022 a complaint was filed alleging that for two days (September 15 and 16) the Ministry of Immigration prohibited Athens lawyer Eugenia Kouniaki, a lawyer representing refugees from Syria, entry into a refugee accommodation facility
The complaint claims that the lawyer was initially barred from entering the accommodation centre (which is not a detention centre) on Thursday 15 September. Despite both written and verbal notification for the visit being subsequently submitted, the Ministry, on Friday 16 September, again gave the Administrator of the facility a verbal order to prohibit the lawyer’s entry.
This prohibition order reportedly runs contrary to the Regulation on the Operation of Temporary Reception Facilities and Temporary Accommodation Facilities for Third Country Citizens (Ministerial Decision 23/13532|Government Gazette 5272/B’/30.11.2020).
According to Article 14 of the said Regulation, entry to the Facility is allowed, after prior notification of the Facility’s Administration under specific conditions, among which is the purpose of legal assistance, for the fulfilment of which “the authorised legal advisors or lawyers of the persons staying have access to the Facilities.”
The Ministry of Immigration’s move also obstructed the work of a licensed lawyer in violation of the Lawyers’ Code, which provides that “all judicial and other authorities must accept and facilitate every lawyer in the exercise of his/her function by showing his/her lawyer’s identity card” (Art.29 para. 3), and that “entry to ministries and public places is freely permitted to lawyers on presentation of their professional identity card, every working day and hour, without any…restriction” (Article 34(2)) (Article 34(2)).
A state governed by the rule of law must ensure, both in law and in fact, that all persons have access to a lawyer. However, in this case, the Ministry of Immigration prevented access to a lawyer, allegedly in violation of the Regulation on the Operation of Temporary Reception Facilities and Temporary Accommodation Facilities for Third Country Nationals, as well as the Code of Lawyers.
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