MEDITERRANEAN: Launch of the Pact for the Mediterranean ― Cyprus presents priorities for upcoming EU Council presidency ― Media investigation highlights growing use of high-tech border surveillance in Greece ― Greece plans to set up repatriation…

• The Pact for the Mediterranean has been launched at a high-level event in Barcelona.
• Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has unveiled the priorities of his country’s upcoming presidency of the Council of the EU.
• A new investigation has revealed how Greece has become a testing ground for advanced surveillance technologies.
• Greece is exploring plans to establish repatriation centres in Africa.
• The Maltese government has been criticised for failing to implement a watchdog’s recommendations for improving conditions in two migration detention centres.
• A large group of humanitarians has gone on trial on the Greek island of Lesvos.

The Pact for the Mediterranean has been launched at a high-level event in Barcelona. The event, which was attended by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas and Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica, as well as ministers from a number of EU and Southern Mediterranean countries, took place on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Barcelona Process and immediately prior to the 10th Union for the Mediterranean Regional Forum. In her speech at the event, Šuica described the launch of the Pact as a “special moment” in the history of the EU’s engagement in the region. However, the EUobserver news agency reported that a number of countries were only represented by “low-level envoys”, raising questions about the extent to which they were “truly invested in the pact”.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has unveiled the priorities of his country’s upcoming presidency of the Council of the EU. Speaking on 1 December. Christodoulides described the presidency, which will be held in the first half of 2026, as a “national mission” focused on two main goals: strengthening the EU’s strategic autonomy and bringing the Union closer to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Later, government ministers provided further details of the presidency programme. Regarding migration, they listed stricter external border controls, stronger coordination among member states and full implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum as priorities.

A new media investigation has revealed how Greece has become a testing ground for advanced surveillance technologies. Conducted by Solomon in co-operation with a number of other media outlets, the investigation has shown that Greece is rapidly expanding its high-tech border monitoring systems, initially deployed along the border with Türkiye, to its borders with North Macedonia and Albania. Largely funded by the EU, this expansion includes AI-powered cameras, thermal sensors, drones and automated command centres aimed at detecting and deterring irregular migration and secondary movements toward Western Europe. Rights groups have repeatedly warned that such technologies contribute to worsening human rights violations at borders, with drones and cameras often facilitating pushbacks and abuse.

Greece is exploring plans to establish repatriation centres in Africa. Speaking to the country’s public broadcaster ERT on 19 November, Minister for Migration and Asylum Thanos Plevris said: “discussions are underway with safe African countries that will accept illegal immigrants whom we cannot return to their homelands”. Plevris explained that the initiative had been developed by Germany and that the Greek government had “expressed our interest in participating in it”. He added that other countries were also interested in the plan. The German Federal Ministry of the Interior was less clear about the details of the initiative, which it noted had been discussed during a meeting on 4 November. “(T)he two ministers identified a shared interest in so-called ‘innovative solutions’ for reducing illegal migration and also discussed the possibility of implementing these in a group of member states,” a ministry official told the POLITICO newspaper.

The Maltese government has been criticised for failing to implement a watchdog’s recommendations for improving conditions in two migration detention centres. According to the Migrant Detention Monitoring Board, which is  tasked with overseeing conditions at the Ħal Far and Safi centres, numerous recommendations ranging from providing detained people with adequate winter clothing due to poor heating, to ensuring sufficient staffing to avoid burnout and high turnover, remain unimplemented. “Our annual reports have all been too similar. Recommendations are repeated. And, regrettably, the hopes that our 16th report would be a marked change in this regard have not come to fruition”, wrote the chair of the board, Simon Micallef Stafrace, in his concluding remarks to the report which was presented in parliament in late November.

A group of humanitarians has gone on trial on the Greek island of Lesvos. The 24 defendants, all of whom were volunteers with the now dissolved Emergency Response Centre International search and rescue NGO, are charged with formation and membership of a criminal organisation, facilitation of illegal entry and money laundering. If found guilty, they face up to 20 years of imprisonment. The trial relates to the volunteers’ activities between 2016 and 2018 when, as the human rights NGO Front Line Defenders notes: “they assisted people on the move whose lives were at risk while trying to reach safety to the island of Lesvos”. Speaking the day before the trial started on 4 December, lawyer Zacharias Kesses, who is representing six of the defendants, said: “At the heart of this case is an attempt by authorities to criminalise humanitarian assistance so that all of these aid organisations leave Lesbos”.

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