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On 9 May, Egypt’s Minister of Labor Hassan Shehata and Greek Minister of Immigration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis (New Democracy, right), met in Cairo and agreed to kick-start the incorporation of 5,000 Egyptian seasonal workers into Greece’s agricultural sector. The plan had already been discussed in 2022 under an agreement to enhance cooperation between the two countries on migration.
Rushed to come into effect after the signature, in March 2024, of the EU’s €7.4 billion-worth strategic and comprehensive partnership to support Egypt and battle irregular migration, the decision also responds to Greece’s deep labour shortage, especially in the agriculture sector.
Despite holding the second-highest unemployment rate in the EU just after Spain, Greece has benefited from an agriculture sector sustained by foreign workers since the arrival of Albanians in the early 90’s. However, the perpetuation of indecent working conditions is making even migrant workers leave Greece for better opportunities, forcing the government to resort to bilateral agreements such as the recent one with Egypt, but not exclusively.
Greece also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bangladesh in 2022, which claimed it would start bringing in 4,000 Bangladeshi workers per year on a regular manner as well as start the regularisation process of the thousands already in Greece.
Although the regularisation of many of those already in the country has been successful, newcomers hardly come, and if they do, they leave, Vasilis Kerasiotis, a Greek migration lawyer who served as legal consultant in the elaboration of the Greece-Bangladesh bilateral agreement, told Voxeurop.
While he says that these agreements “set a minimum background for legal workers and legal entry procedures”, and that “documented people are less vulnerable to suffer from exploitation”, he notes that “if the agreements are not properly implemented they are pointless”. Kerasiotis doubts that the people coming under such agreements will remain in Greece, “those arriving under other immigration laws have left, they do not stay”. The reason for that being that the conditions seen at Greece’s harvest fields remain little different than those judged against by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case known as “Manolada”.
Risks of exploitation
In 2013, a group of Bangladeshi workers were shot by their Greek farm supervisor for demanding that their wages be paid after months of delay. The case, dubbed “Manolada”, reached the ECHR and was used to advocate for the improvement of seasonal workers' rights in Greece.
“The situation described in the judgement of the Manolada case is the situation that migrants face in our country”, says Kerasiotis, who also served as the lawyer of this case’s victims before the court. “Special economic zones, exploitation, non-running water, people waiting for their salary at the mercy of their employers’ […] modern slavery conditions”, he summarises.
While Kerasiotis claims that the positive judgement of the court and the advocacy around it have led to improvements and to regularisation schemes such as the deals with Bangladesh and Egypt, some human rights organisations do not see things as positively.
Yonous Muhammadi co-founded the Greek Forum for Refugees. In the past, he suffered from those inhumane conditions himself when he arrived in Greece after fleeing Afghanistan in 2001. For him, rights violations are still taking place, notably the lack of decent housing.
“People live on the field, under overcrowded tents with over 30 people inside”, he recounts with indignation. “Even when it comes to those foreign seasonal workers who end up employed in the tourism sector, we have even seen cases of people sleeping in basements, the place where the engines of the air conditioning are stored.”
Although he recognises that bilateral deals agreements such as the one between Greece and Egypt will ensure that some of these extreme conditions are avoided, Yonous is certain that Egyptian and other workers coming through such schemes will risk being exploited. “If they come with a paper that says that they will work for six hours, they will end up working twelve, that is the reality”, he points out. “Violations will continue to happen because authorities will not put controls in place to oversee that conditions are respected; there are social movements who are looking at this, but it is not enough.”
Modern slavery
What Younous recounts is unfortunately not very different from what human rights groups say in other European countries where foreign seasonal workers make up the efforts behind the products we then find in our supermarkets.
When Italy-based activist Yvan Sagnet was studying for his college degree in Turin after having come from Cameroon, he was hired to work in the tomato harvest in the southern province of Lecce. “I thought I would be working as in any other normal job, but when I arrived I was deeply surprised. I found big camps of people living under housing made of plastic and cardboard, I did not know where I was”, he told Voxeurop.
‘Attracting workers only on temporary residence permits, without the right to family reunification or the right to long-term residence or naturalisation is not a viable option’ – Generation 2.0
Back in 2011, he remembers being paid around €14 for almost 16 hours of work a day, which was reduced to €5 because the farm owners charged them for transport to the fields and for food and water.
He decided to organise the first seasonal workers' strike in Italy, which lasted two months. In 2017, he founded his association, No Cap, to fight against exploitation within the agriculture sector.
“The situation has unfortunately not changed much since 2011”, he says frankly. But he’s still committed to fight, despite being threatened by members of the mafias that control the agricultural market. Yvan thinks that agreements with third countries, such as the Greece-Egypt deal, “because the working conditions remain the same.”
Not just work machines
“The main argument for signing bilateral agreements on the employment of seasonal workers that are third-country nationals is that the gaps in the Greek labour market are filled legally and immediately”, Generation 2.0, a Greek rights organisation monitoring working and living conditions of the migrant agricultural workers in the country, told Voxeurop.
“However, [...] previous agreements of this type have faced barriers in implementation due to time-consuming and bureaucratic procedures”, they say. “Moreover, they disregard the possibility of filling these gaps with workers who have already been in the country for years, living invisibly and contributing decisively to the growth of the Greek economy while being employed irregularly and exposed to deplorable working conditions.”
With the summer harvest season around the corner, farmers in Greece have started asking refugee organisations such as Yonous’ Greek Forum for Refugees for irregular workers as the hiring process of Egyptians is still slowly underway. Yonous’ response to them, though, is that they do not have people interested. “People do not want to go to these jobs, what they want is to leave this country.”
Even if the last years’ regularisation schemes have granted many work residencies that allow them to contest their situations in case of exploitation, these fail to treat foreign workers as something more than manpower, Yonous believes. “These schemes are nice, but just if you look at people as work machines”, he argues. “Migrants and refugees are part of this society, and they are not just looking for jobs, but also for prospects of life here with their families and children, as human beings.”
“Attracting workers only on temporary residence permits, without the right to family reunification or the right to long-term residence or naturalisation is not a viable option”, Generation 2.0 coincides. “The government just wants to find an answer in terms of communication towards the far-right and those anti-migrants, to tell them that they are signing deals that bring people to work and then send them back”, Yonous adds.
After the European elections, which saw the right-wing stay in power and the far-right gain ground with over 20% of seats in parliament, migrant workers' rights organisations are more concerned than ever
In Greece and beyond, they hope that bilateral agreements with third countries will be put on hold until genuine regularisation and integration of foreign workers already present in their territories is achieved. If already signed, these bilateral agreements should at least be properly monitored to ensure that workers' rights are respected, regardless of where they come from.
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